Audio Guide Collioure

Collioure

Places researched in this city

A selection of the 16 places we've researched in this city. The full set is in the Parroo app.

• Medieval fortress
• Baroque church
• Fauvism trail
• Catalan quarter
• Coastal chapel
• Historic windmill

• 01

  Royal Castle of Collioure

  Greeks, Romans, Visigoths, the Kings of Majorca, and the Habsburgs all held this fortress before France did: the site has been continuously occupied since antiquity, with the first recorded fortification dating to 981. Its medieval core, built from local schist, still anchors the entire town from its rocky promontory above the Mediterranean.

• 02

  Church of Our Lady of the Angels

  The bell tower you see in every photograph of Collioure was not built as a bell tower at all: it was the old port lighthouse, later incorporated into this Baroque church constructed between 1684 and 1691 after Vauban ordered the original medieval church demolished to expand the castle's glacis.

• 03

  Path of Fauvism

  In the summer of 1905, Matisse and Derain spent a few months here and produced work so startling that a Paris critic called them "wild beasts," accidentally naming the Fauvism movement. The trail places 19 reproductions of their paintings at the exact spots where each was made, so you can compare the canvas to the view directly.

• 04

  Fort Saint-Elme

  What began as a Moorish watchtower in the 8th century was transformed by Charles V between 1538 and 1552 into a star-shaped fortress with walls over eight meters thick, designed by Italian architect Benedetto de Ravenna to withstand contemporary artillery. It sits on a ridge above both Collioure and Port-Vendres, giving it one of the widest strategic views on the coast.

• 05

  Tomb of Antonio Machado

  Spain's most celebrated Republican poet died in exile in Collioure in February 1939, just days after crossing the Pyrenees during the Retirada. The plain grey stone slab at the entrance to the municipal cemetery, created in 1958, has become a living memorial where visitors leave poems and flowers; the site is officially recognized as a "Lieu de Mémoire" of the Spanish exile.

• 06

  Roque Anchovy House

  Founded in 1870, Maison Roque is the oldest anchovy salting house still operating in France, and the craft it practices goes back to medieval salt-tax privileges granted by the French crown. Visitors can watch the traditional salting process on site, a method that has changed very little in over a century.

• 07

  Dominican Cellar

  King Jacques II of Majorca founded a Dominican convent here in 1290, and the Gothic church, with its 32-meter nave, was finally consecrated in 1457 after surviving an Aragonese occupation and a major earthquake. After the Revolution it became a military warehouse, and since 1926 it has served as a wine cellar, making it one of the more unusual repurposings of a Gothic church in France.

• 08

  9 more places to discover

  In the Parroo app