Toulon Travel Guide

 Nemorino Says:  According to operabase.com, Bizet’s Carmen is the third most often produced opera worldwide, after Verdi’s La traviata and Puccini’s La Bohème. (Operabase tabulated the number of productions, not the number of performances, over a five-year period.)The opera houses in... 

 Nemorino Says:  If you don’t mind getting a stiff neck, have a good look at the ceiling of the Toulon opera house. The painting up there is fifteen meters in diameter and portrays 123 “personages”, which I presume includes angels, demons, busts and statues in addition to people. The artist,... 

 Nemorino Says:  Unlike the Marseille Opera, which faces north and thus is nearly always in the shade, the Toulon Opera aka Théâtre Municipal faces south and looks glorious when the sun is shining on its nicely renovated façade.The Toulon Opera was built in nineteen months and was... 

 Nemorino Says:  The dominant building on north side of the Place de la Liberté, behind the Fountain of the Federation, is the Grand Hôtel, built in 1868-1869.In the long run, the Grand Hôtel was too grand to be just a hotel. During the Second World War it was requisitioned by the occupying... 

 Nemorino Says:  In 2001, after the city elections that removed the right-wing Front National from power in Toulon, the new mayor began working with the mayors of eleven nearby towns to form a cooperative regional entity called Toulon Provence Méditerranée (TPM) which is now responsible for... 

 Nemorino Says:  In the autumn of 2012 the Théâtre Liberté presented an exhibition and a series of plays and lectures on the topic of “1962/2012: the War of Algeria, fifty years later”. One of the plays on this topic was by a visiting theater troupe called La Compagnie des Camerluches. (The... 

 Nemorino Says:  Several companies offer boat tours of the harbor and the military port. The one I chose (for no particular reason) was called Bateliers de la Côte d’Azur. The tour was excellent, and I can highly recommend it to anyone who understands French. (I didn’t notice any harbor... 

 Nemorino Says:  On the civilian side of the harbor I learned from our guide’s commentary what a Ro-Ro ship is. Ro-Ro means “roll on, roll off”, sort of like a car ferry, but bigger. Trucks or anything with wheels can be driven on (so the freight does not have to be loaded by a crane) and... 

 Nemorino Says:  For about half of our harbor tour we went past the military port, which is the Mediterranean headquarters of the French Navy. The actual military port is off limits to civilian ships, so we stayed just outside the boundary markers. Our guide knew everything about the ships... 

 Nemorino Says:  The great military engineer Sébastien Le Prestre, marquis de Vauban (1633-1707), visited Toulon four times between 1679 and 1700 to fortify the city and develop an arsenal to support the ambitious naval policy of King Louis XIV.On our harbor tour we had a look at some of the... 

 Nemorino Says:  This Royal Tower was built from 1514 to 1524. It was the first fort to be built to protect the harbor at Toulon.Vauban did not arrive on the scene until 155 years later. When he inspected the Tour Royale he praised it highly (in contrast to his scathing criticism of the... 

 Nemorino Says:  This large aerial photograph in the Naval Museum gives an overview of Toulon harbor today.The museum documents the military port of Toulon from the earliest times to the present, including the role of the French Navy in the Second World War. There is an exhibit showing how... 

 Nemorino Says:  In addition to the fortifications, Vauban also designed the arsenal at Toulon, including a rope-making factory that was housed in a very long building (shown as a model in the museum), to produce the vast quantities of ropes that were needed for the large sailing ships of... 

 Nemorino Says:  I rented a bicycle from tOObike for three days at € 11.00 per day, which at the time was their rate for three days or more. (This has since gone down a Euro to € 10.00 per day.) For only one or two days they charge € 12.00 per day, and they also have weekly or monthly rates.... 

 Nemorino Says:  This is a short but car-free bicycle trail that goes along the northern edge of the Arsenal. It starts near the Palace of Justice, in the center of Toulon, and leads west for a few kilometers until it gets to the far end of the Arsenal, where it abruptly stops at an...