Surrounded by canals, a lagoon and the Mediterranean, the port town has fabulous seafood and some quirky cultural traditions. It also has a handful of excellent museums, pocket theatres and an open-air gallery of street art. The town was founded in when Louis XIV was looking for a harbour for his royal galleys and it expanded hugely in the 19th century as a major port for the wine, wool and wood trade. Although the tournament takes place late in August, even in winter preparation and training is under way for the joutes , spectacular water jousts on the canal.
It has been going on for over years and involves two teams dressed as sailors charging at each other in a bulky rowing boat carrying musicians and a lone, elevated jouster who tries to batter their opposite number into the water with a lance. Cabinets of his private letters, sketches, notebooks, self-portraits and his silver fountain pen contrast with the exuberant contemporary art in the adjoining rooms.
A startling exhibition of female artists, Nazanin Pouyandeh and Brigitte Aubignac , continues until the beginning of March. I discovered that he knew almost songs by heart by the age of five, that he wrote his lyrics out on school notepaper and transformed from a scandalous cabaret singer in the s to selling 20m albums a year by the mids.
The top floor is devoted to dioramas of childhood objects by artist and co-founder Bernard Belluc: school chemistry projects frozen in space, toy cars, plastic dinosaurs and transistor radios. It had no roof and had been abandoned for 20 years. Ferron worked in New York for four decades as an artist, architect and conceptual designer and is drawn to nature and eco-friendly projects.
Upstairs are four cool apartments for rent and the kitchen ceiling is made from large tin tiles, imported from Brooklyn to prevent fires. Stalls are selling glistening Atlantic wolffish laid on beds of iced mussels and clams with stacks of winter vegetables, charcuterie and cheese. Winter is truffle season. You can have a truffle omelette made on the spot or take a sniff from a plastic container kept under the counter. Perhaps the most authentic place for six oysters and a glass of white muscat is the row of bars along La Pointe Courte on a tip of land just north of the railway tracks.
