Collioure: Where Fauvism Began

Required Activities

• Follow the Chemin du Fauvisme, the trail of reproductions of Matisse's and Derain's 1905 paintings set up where they painted them

• Visit the Chateau Royal of the Kings of Majorca and find the three bastions and the demi-lune Vauban's engineer Saint-Hilaire finished in 1690, then stand on the glacis and work out where the 130 houses of the old town stood before they were pulled down in October 1671

• Walk out to Notre-Dame-des-Anges, the church built between 1684 and 1691 to replace the medieval one Vauban had razed, sea on three sides of it; find Joseph Sunyer's 1698 high-altar retable inside and the bell tower beside it, the old medieval harbour tower

• Find Antonio Machado's grave in the town cemetery, where the Spanish poet was buried after reaching Collioure ill in February 1939 during the Retirada and dying there on the 22nd, and look for the letters left on it by visitors

• Walk up to Fort Saint-Elme on the ridge, the star fort Charles V built in the 16th century around a Moorish watchtower of the 8th century, and from its walls pick out the Chateau Royal, the Fort Miradou and the Tour Madeloc

• Taste the salted anchovies at Roque or Desclaux, the last two of the many salting houses Collioure once had, and walk through Roque's salting workshop to see the fish laid down in salt by hand