HYERES, THE MEDIEVAL TOWN (VAR)
Textes : François FrayPhotos : Marc Heller, Gérard Roucaute
HTML : Christophe Chetaneau (CC&ZV)
Version Française
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HYERES, THE MEDIEVAL TOWN (VAR)Textes : François FrayPhotos : Marc Heller, Gérard Roucaute HTML : Christophe Chetaneau (CC&ZV) |
Version Française |
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The town of Hyères, which owes its name and its wealth to the nearby salt works, represented a strategic place for the Counts of Provence during the Middle Ages. Dominated by its castle and surrounded by
two fortified walls, the old town contains several churches, a Commandery of the Knights Templar and also many vestiges of its civil medieval architecture, scattered along its picturesque stepped streets. During the seventeenth century, Hyères was overtaken by Toulon and only recovered a measure of economic prosperity with the nineteenth-century development of winter tourism, which led to the development of the town beyond its walls. Between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, new constructions, some of them of international prestige (Mallet-Stevens' Noailles Villa for example), came to enrich an urban heritage which dates back almost a thousand years.
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