Page:Book of the Riviera.djvu/142

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110
THE RIVIERA

for a bell tower. That of Grimaud is in better condition, but is a ruin. The place was taken from the Grimaldis in 1378 by Louis I. of Anjou and Provence, as the Grimaldi of that time had sided in the war of succession with Charles of Durazzo, and he gave it to Christopher Adorno. It passed from one to another, and was raised into a marquisate in 1627; but the castle was dismantled in virtue of a decree in 1655.

The town is curious, built on a conical hill dominated by the castle. The streets are narrow. The church is rude, Early Romanesque, and very curious.

Undoubtedly the sea originally ran up to Cogolin and Grimaud. Now all the basin out of which they rise is a flat alluvial plain intersected by dykes, and growing, near La Foux, splendid umbrella pines.

S. Tropez, charming little town as it is, the best centre for excursions in the Chain of the Maures, is nevertheless not a place that can ever become a winter residence, as it looks to the north and is lashed by the terrible Mistral. But it has this advantage denied to the other towns on the coast, that, having the sun at the back, one looks from it upon the sea in all its intensity of colour without being dazzled.

S. Tropez has been supposed to occupy the site of a Phœnician-Greek town, Heraclea Caccabaria, but this is improbable. This place was almost certainly in the sweet sun-bathed Bay of Cavalaire. There were, indeed, two ancient towns on the Gulf, Alcone and Athenopolis; and certainly Grimaud was a town in Roman times, for there are remains of the aqueduct that supplied it with water.

The Gulf was called Sinus Sambracitanus, and, as already stated, at one time reached inland to the feet of