The villages of the Var
In the upper part of the department, the formerly fortified villages, with a pastoral and rural vocation, offer today to the tourist's amazement their narrow streets, their squares shaded by plane trees, their often secret passages under the houses, their medieval vestiges of castles and ramparts, their facades with narrow windows which served as much to protect themselves from the cold in winter as from undesirable visits.
The middle country has many bastides or large farms dotted around the countryside, abbeys such as Le Thoronet, all built according to the same Cistercian plan, always nestled in remote valleys away from the main roads, villages that are peaceful towns in Dracénie or in the Fayence area.
Many villages in the Var have a campanile, a wrought iron cage that finishes and tops the bell tower of churches. Their origin is very old. In the Middle Ages, the villages were mainly built in wood. Their ramparts were equipped with watchtowers, at the top of which were bells - campana, in Latin - allowing to give the alert. Later, the towers, built in stone, were equipped with large frontal clocks visible from afar. The bells located at the top, connected to the clock mechanism, rang the hours that marked the rhythm of social life. Many bell towers adopted the "wind cage" which also had the merit of allowing the violent winds - mistral, tramontana - to cross the structure without dislodging the bell tower from its roof. In the Var, there are more than one hundred iron bell towers. Each bell tower is made of two parts, a base and a crown. The base has a geometric shape, cylinder, cube, hexagon or polyhedron. The crown is a spire, or a hemispherical dome, or a pyramid, or a dome. Some campaniles have the shape of a kiosk. The campaniles are all different: the imagination of each artist has endowed them with volutes, palmettes, flowers, acanthus leaves, flames and crosses, which make them true works of art. Most of the campaniles of the Var date from the 18th century. In each village you pass through, don't forget to look up at the top of the church tower. You will be seduced by the graceful, subtle and sometimes naive forms of these large iron cages.
Urbanization and cities
Especially since 1945, the coastline has undergone intense urbanization, which is not always in the best taste - let's put it in perspective, however: we are far from the excessive "concreteization" of the first seaside resorts in Occitania. Former small fishing ports such as Sanary, Bandol or Six-Fours-les-Plages have resolutely focused their development on tourism, boating, water sports and games, while districts such as Saint-Aygulf or Les Issambres have experienced, since the 1950s, a lightning expansion. Since 1986, fortunately, the law on the coastline has ensured the protection and development of the coastal zone: construction has been regulated since then, so that the Var still enjoys many wild and protected areas.
The city of Toulon, hemmed in between the sea, Mount Faron and the Ollioules gorges - which have slowed down its westward expansion by very sharp reliefs as soon as it leaves the Pont-du-Las district -, has found a natural outlet to the east, after Saint-Jean-du-Var and La Valette, in a large plain that is conducive to the establishment of industrial zones and shopping centers, and to significant peripheral urbanization. Since 2015-2016, several streets and squares in the heart of the city have been completely restructured and the old city center has been largely rehabilitated. It is continuing its transformation with major restoration projects that have been brilliantly carried out, such as the rehabilitation of the former municipal covered market, which has become a covered market for eating out.
The city of Hyères has also undergone a beautiful metamorphosis of its old town center in recent years with numerous restoration works: creation of an arts promenade with numerous artisans' or artists' workshops established on the first floor of old buildings, renovation of several streets in the medieval center, reconstruction of the city's main square inaugurated in 2019, seaside promenade between the port of Hyères and the village of l'Ayguade inaugurated in 2019 as well, the opening at the end of 2021 of the Museum of Cultures and Landscapes in the former Bank of France in the city center...
Contemporary architecture in the Var
The Var is also a department with modern architecture with buildings with clean lines, starting with the restaurants and trendy bars of the coast, as in Saint-Tropez for example.
This modernity is not new in the Var. It goes back to the beginning of the century, the Var having very early attracted artists from all horizons, because of its luminosity and the beauty of its landscapes.
The Villa Noailles, located in the heights of Vieux-Hyères, is a fine example of this avant-garde architecture. It is a temple of modernity, immaculately white, created by the architect Robert Mallet-Stevens in the 1920s. It offers the appearance of a set of superimposed cubes, arranged according to the relief of the land and the path of the sun, to offer maximum sunlight throughout the day. The garden has large bays like holes in the landscape whose rectangular shape can evoke the frame of a painting on a wall. Many artists lived and created in this extremely comfortable villa, with multiple bathrooms, a swimming pool and a squash court. Abandoned after the death of Marie-Laure de Noailles in 1972, the villa was finally bought by the city of Hyères and transformed into a center for art, architecture, fashion, photography and design. The famous Hyères fashion festival is held there every year and is attended by genius designers.
More recently, the Carmignac Foundation opened its doors in Porquerolles with a museum of contemporary art, installed in a redesigned Provencal farmhouse where splendid works of art are displayed.
The Archistoire Destination Var application
It is a mobile application in "hybrid reality" to explore with your smartphone remarkable places of the Var, with a 360 degree vision, including many monuments and sites representative of the architecture of the Var. The application, available on Google Play and the Apple store, will allow you to discover their heritage and history in an immersive, original and intuitive way. The application offers "stories", at the scale of the department, a territory, a city or even a neighborhood. You can also discover these stories from a distance, which will give you a taste of the discoveries that await you.
