Are you looking for a place on the French coast that is more than a beach with an old town behind it? Collioure is a port of two and a half thousand people on the Côte Vermeille, half an hour by train from Perpignan and twenty-five kilometres from the Spanish border, and in the summer of 1905 two painters invented Fauvism here.
I arrived on a September evening, with a heavy sea rolling into the bay and the sun going down behind the Albères. I expected a pretty village and found something more interesting: a place that has realised it was painted and has built its own story on that fact, with twelve gilded bronze frames planted along the seafront. If you like this way of travelling through southern France, the site also has what to see in Nîmes and what to see in Carcassonne, both a couple of hours away by road.
So what is there actually to see in Collioure, beyond the coloured houses of the photographs?
The summer of 1905, when Matisse and Derain invented Fauvism
Henri Matisse got here first. In early July 1905 André Derain, then twenty-five, joined him, and the two worked side by side for some nine weeks on the same motif: the bay, the boats, the bell tower, the mountains behind the village.
What happened in those weeks was a change of rule. Colour stopped describing what the eye saw and started building the picture: a shadow could be green, a boat pink, the sea orange, not out of caprice but because the relationship between colours held the canvas together better than likeness would have. Matisse went back to Paris with fifteen canvases, forty watercolours and about a hundred drawings; Derain with some thirty canvases and fifty-odd sketches.
The rest happened in October, at the Salon d’Automne in the Grand Palais. Their works hung in room VII alongside those of Vlaminck, Manguin, Camoin and Marquet, and in the middle of the room stood a marble bust in fifteenth-century taste signed by Albert Marque. In the supplement of Gil Blas of 17 October 1905 the critic Louis Vauxcelles wrote the phrase that named the movement: «Donatello chez les fauves», Donatello among the wild beasts. It was an insult, and it became a label in art history.
Of the canvases painted here, the best known is The Open Window, Collioure, now at the National Gallery of Art in Washington: a window onto the harbour, the boats reduced to patches of pink and green. Derain’s Le Faubourg de Collioure is at the Centre Pompidou. There is not a single original in Collioure itself: the village keeps the motif, not the pictures, and that is why the Fauvism trail I describe further down is no consolation prize.
The Château Royal, five centuries of frontier
The royal castle occupies the headland that separates the two beaches, and its bulk explains the history of the village better than any information panel. A fortification is documented here from 1207; in the thirteenth century it became the summer residence of the kings of Majorca, then passed to the crown of Aragon, which took Collioure by force in 1344. From the sixteenth century it was the southern frontier of Spain, garrisoned against France.
In 1642 the French seized the stronghold, and the Treaty of the Pyrenees of 1659 moved the border: Collioure became French, and a Spanish fortress facing France turned into a French fortress facing Spain. This is where Vauban comes in, and where the history of the castle becomes the history of the village. A hundred and thirty houses were pulled down to make room for the defensive works, and on 1 February 1673 the fortified medieval church, which stood inside the walls, was razed as well.
The castle stayed in military hands until 1922, when it was listed as a historic monument; since 1952 it has belonged to the Pyrénées-Orientales department, which opens it to the public and stages exhibitions inside. Climbing the paved ramp along the walls in the evening, you see what no ground plan conveys: the masonry continues the rock without a break, and you cannot tell where the crag ends and the bastion begins.
Notre-Dame-des-Anges and the bell tower that was a lighthouse
The new church was built from 1684, right on the sea, because the old one had been demolished to make room for the castle. The bell tower, on the other hand, was not built: they reused the harbour beacon, the tower that made smoke by day and fire by night to mark the entrance to the bay. The Tuscan-style dome that caps it was added in 1810.
The result is the silhouette on every postcard of the Côte Vermeille, and it comes from a saving: the round bell tower of Notre-Dame-des-Anges is round because it was a lighthouse, not because an architect drew it that way.
The real reason to go in is inside. The high altar retable was commissioned from the Catalan sculptor Joseph Sunyer, who undertook in October 1698 to complete it in four years: the base was set in April 1699, the first tier in April 1700, the second in December 1701, and the gilding was not paid off until 1724. It is one of the great Catalan baroque retables, gold leaf throughout, and the dimness of the nave hides it: there is a coin-operated box, and one euro turns the lights on.
Please note: the church is at the centre of a six-million-euro restoration begun in 2020, covering the bell tower, the facades, the structure and the retables. The tower is out of its scaffolding and the facades have been redone, but work on the building continues and completion is announced for 2027. The tourist office states that in July and August the church opens only for mass (checked on 7 August 2026): call ahead before counting on it.
The twelve frames along the seafront
Walking along the bay I came across a metal frame as tall as I am, planted on the jetty and turned towards the village. There was nothing inside it: through the void you could see the castle on the left and the bell tower on the right, with the water between them, and a man was waiting his turn to take the shot.
It is not a temporary installation. It is called Points 2 vue, it dates from 1995 and it is the work of the artist Marc-André 2 Figueres: twelve frame-sculptures in aluminium and gilded bronze, 220 centimetres tall, each of which frames the bell tower of Collioure in a different composition. They stage a simple idea: a landscape is not a given but a crop, and changing the frame changes the picture. According to a France 3 Occitanie report, some four thousand photographs a day are taken through them.
One curiosity: the frames are empty on purpose, and should not be confused with the reproductions on the Fauvism trail, which are printed panels carrying a work by Matisse or Derain. The frames make you compose the image; the panels show it to you already composed.
The chemin du fauvisme, where the paintings go back to their place
The chemin du fauvisme is a free, open-access loop through the streets of the village, created in 1994. Along it stand reproductions of works Matisse and Derain painted here in the summer of 1905, each one at the exact spot where the painter set up his easel. You stand in front of the panel, look up, and have the motif and its translation into colour in the same field of view.
The tourist office’s own pages disagree on the number of reproductions: one counts seventeen, another twenty. Call it around twenty, and it is not a figure you need in order to walk the route.
It works better than it sounds, and not for sentimental reasons. In front of Le Faubourg de Collioure you can see that Derain did not exaggerate the colours of the village: he shifted the relationships, and the roof that is orange in the painting is a dirty pink in life. It is a difference words cannot convey and the spot shows you in three seconds.
The booklet Le Fauvisme, la couleur comme absolu costs 6 euros at the tourist office; guided walks run from April to All Saints’ Day, and there is a town app for anyone who prefers to go alone.
The Mouré and the coast to the north
Behind Boramar beach, the one in front of the church, begins the Mouré: the old fishermen’s quarter, steep lanes climbing between facades in full colour, and the part of Collioure that copes best with the August rush hour, simply because it goes uphill.
Follow the seafront north and you leave the village for the rocks. From there the houses look as though they were set on the stone without foundations, with sea-green shutters, a colour that recurs here and is not an affectation of the restaurants. This is where I stayed longest, and it is also the best place for sunset, because the sun drops behind the mountains and the light comes back onto the village instead of into your face.
Bear in mind that when the tramontane blows, the sea comes into the bay with real waves: the photographs below are from a September evening when the beach was unusable and the village was beautiful.
Machado, the Retirada and the castle that became a camp
In January 1939, as the Spanish Civil War was ending, half a million people crossed the Pyrenees into France. This is the Retirada, and Collioure sits directly on the route.
The poet Antonio Machado left Barcelona on 22 January with his mother and some of his family, arrived here exhausted and ill, and died on 22 February 1939 in the Quintana boarding house. His mother died three days later, on 25 February. They are buried together in the old cemetery, and the grave has become a place of pilgrimage: when I passed it was covered in flowers and notes left by Spanish visitors.
The Quintana house is now the Espace Antonio Machado, a small museum devoted to his exile; from June to September it opens Wednesday to Sunday, 10.00-13.00 and 14.00-18.00, and entry costs 1 euro. The cemetery is freely accessible, 9.00-17.00.
In those same months the castle became the camp spécial de Collioure, a disciplinary camp for Spanish Republicans, in conditions that the permanent exhibition now installed inside it, De l’exode à l’exil (1936-1945), calls inhuman. It is worth taking it in the right order: the exhibition first, then the rooms, because the same building that looks like a postcard backdrop was a place of internment eighty years ago.
Anchovies, and a free visit worth half an hour
The Collioure anchovy is the second thing the village is known for, and it is not folklore for tourists: salting is documented here over centuries and two family houses still practise it. Maison Roque has worked since 1870 and is the oldest French anchovy salting house still in business; Maison Desclaux since 1903.
At Roque the visit to the old workshop, on the first floor above the shop, is free and lasts about twenty minutes, tasting included. It is open Monday to Friday, 8.15-11.45 and 14.05-16.45, with no booking needed unless you come as a group. They explain the real cycle: salting in barrels and maturing for six to twelve months, three at the very least, then filleting by hand. The modern workshop cannot be visited, for hygiene reasons.
What you cannot visit today
Two things you can see from a distance and cannot go into, so you do not plan around them.
Fort Saint-Elme, the sixteenth-century fortress on the ridge above the village and a fixture of every panoramic photograph, is privately owned and has been closed to visitors since 2023 for work. No reopening date has been announced. It is perfectly visible from outside and the paths up to it remain open.
The bell tower of Notre-Dame-des-Anges cannot be climbed. Exterior restoration is finished and the town has said it will open to visits once work on the church is over, with a dedicated safety system: for now that is an intention, not a date.
Practical information
Checked on 7 August 2026 on the official sites ledepartement66.fr, tourisme-collioure.com and anchois-roque.fr. Prices and hours change: check them again before you travel.
Château Royal, tickets. The full ticket costs 9 euros. The reduced ticket costs 7 euros and also applies to groups of fifteen or more. Château Royal, opening hours. July and August: 9.30-18.30. April, May, June, September and October: 10.00-18.00. November to March: 10.00-17.00. Last entry is 45 minutes before closing, and the castle is closed on 1 January, 1 May, 15 and 16 August and 25 December; the department’s page gives the closure as running to 31 December. Château Royal, free entry. Entry is free for under-18s, for EU citizens aged 18 to 25, for jobseekers, for recipients of the French minimum income and for school groups. From October to June it is also free on the first Sunday of the month. Château Royal, guided tours. They are included in the ticket and start at 10.30 and 14.30. Free of charge. The chemin du fauvisme, the Points 2 vue frames, the cemetery with Machado’s grave and the Roque salting visit cost nothing. The Espace Antonio Machado costs 1 euro. Getting there by train. Collioure is on the Perpignan-Cerbère TER line, with roughly one train an hour and more in July and August. The station is in the village, a few minutes on foot from the harbour, and it is by far the easiest way to arrive. Getting there by car. It is about thirty kilometres from Perpignan. The centre has metered parking with a six-hour maximum and a blue zone with one free hour, and in high season it fills early. Better to leave the car at the Cap Dourats car park on the route de Madeloc and take the free shuttle, which runs every half hour: from June to September it operates 10.00-23.30, in May at weekends only until 19.30. How long you need. The village can be walked in half a day. With the castle, the Fauvism trail and the salting house you need a full day, and the evening is the best time for the seafront. When to go. In August the centre is crowded and parking is a problem. May, June and September give you the same sea with half the people.
If you carry on south after Collioure, the border is twenty-five kilometres away and Girona is an hour and a half by car; if you head north instead, the natural stop is Carcassonne. The wider picture is in what to see in France beyond Paris.
