The Côte d'Azur and Saint Tropez

It is quite well known that with more than 75 million visitors every year, France is the world's leading tourist destination (before China and the US). In fact, especially in summertime there are more foreign tourists than French residents ... It is less known that when asked in a recent poll about which French towns they have heard about, people cited Saint Tropez in the third place. 

This may be due to Brigitte Bardot's moving to St. Tropez in the 60's, followed by other French artists and movie stars. One may wonder why these people went to St. Tropez rather than to Cannes or Nice as do many English or American stars (or the middle east oil sheiks). The answer is very simple: stars like privacy, and also there is no place with a better climate on the Côte than right here. 

Urbanisation in the Maures mountains has always been much more restricted than in the Esterel mountains on the north east side of the Côte, initially due to higher risk of forest fires (the Maures are further south and dryer), later because of an outright public policy limiting any sort of construction as the local majors did not want their seaside looking like Marina Baie des Anges in Nice or similar chicken cases in the Languedoc region. 

Then came a new legislation in the 80s prohibiting immediate seaside construction at less than 100 meters from the shore, which is larger than most of the coastline in this mountain region. At the same time the French government created the Conservatoire du Littoral, a still rather unknown public institution run by only a few dozens of state employees. The Conservatoire has nearly unlimited public and private funds to buy or to expropriate any seashore land along the French coast or along selected lakes such as the Geneva and Annecy Lakes. Once under control, the land is preserved in its natural condition and any construction is prohibited. Today the Conservatoire already owns one sixth of the entire French coast, that is 850 kilometres of seashore or 70,000 hectares.! The ultimate target of this institution is to own 200,000 hectares by the year 2050, that is half of the French seashore. In a typical French way, private ownership of immediate seaside land will become more and more difficult,  if not impossible.

Scientist say that with 15 million visitors per year, the Conservatoire is the largest open ecomuseum of the world. Yet most of the time visitors don't even know that they are on the ground of the Conservatoire. Still the most beautiful spots of the French coasts, such as the Pointe du Raz in Britany, the Port Cros Island National Park and the Rayol Gardens on the Côte d'Azur (next to Pramousquier) are definitely owned by the Conservatoire.

Among the properties which do not (yet) belong to the Conservatoire, waterfront estates are very scarce as the coastal road closely follows the shore in these mountain regions. So almost all of the time tourists have to cross the road to go from their houses to the sea. Whenever the mountains fall steeply into the waterline, which is rather the rule than the exception on this part of the coast, the road may climb with the mountains or the mountains overhang the road; this is why the Esterel and Maures coastal roads are called cornices (cliff roads). Beaches are also very scarce in this rocky region (the rocks have a beautiful red colour), so the few beaches are rather crowded except for the ones which are difficult to reach, either because there is no access from the road or because there is no possibility to park along the winding road. 

As beaches are scarce and waterfront properties are also scarce, you can imagine how scarce beachfront properties can be in this region. Even the famous Club Mediterranee could never manage to get one … The only “Club Med” on the Cote d’Azur is right next-door to our property on the slopes of Cap Negre, but they have to climb down from the mountain to reach “our” beach. Still, just like us they are on the right (=beach) side of the road. Cap Negre is the Cape Cod of the Cote d’Azur, with fancy houses for the richest of Europe in a closed private property with American style guardians at its entrance. 

Here again, just like in the mountains between Ramatuelle and St Tropez where Brigitte Bardot lives, and unlike Sunset Bvd in LA or Super-Cannes on the Esterel mountains, total privacy is guaranteed.