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Le Pays de Fayence
Le Pays de Fayence
North of the Estérel, in Saint Raphaël’s arrière pays, a group of villages perchées, known collectively as the Pays de Fayence, clings to the tops of the highest hills.
Fayence, Seillans, Mons, Callian, Tourrettes, Montauroux and Saint Paul en Forêt are all tiny medieval villages with tall, narrow houses hanging over lanes that are sometimes barely an arm span across. Streets are cobbled, many paved with river-smoothed stones set in flights of stairs, called calades. In the oldest and highest parts of the villages, ancient archways carry the higher lanes over those below. Houses form vaults over the ruelles that pass below.
For thousands of years, these naturally fortified places with their panoramic views of the distant coast and countryside, provided refuge andsafety from invaders, plagues, pirates and warring factions. The so-called “Saracen Gate” in Fayence is evidence of just one of the perceived threats to the medieval population of the town. Here and there in the villages there are remains of prehistoric and Celto-Ligurian fortresses.
Elsewhere in Provence, villagers moved down into valleys when the ages of plague and warfare passed. Vaison la Romaine and Oppède in the Luberon (with abandoned Oppède le Vieux above it) are examples.
Here, however, this cluster of villages is one of several you will come across in the Côte d’Azur where the upper village has always remained occupied. Maybe the inhabitants liked the great views.
It is possible that the Pays de Fayence has kept so much of its medieval character because, at one time, the region was among the poorest in France. But fortunes were made in mimosa growing on the Tanneron hills in the early 20th century, followed closely by the growth of tourism.
Last updated March 15, 2012
Posted in France | Western Côte d’Azur
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