Fort Freinet Ruins, La Garde-Freinet
A stone settlement built into the rocks above the current village
This is a rock cut settlement above the present day village of La Garde, which was where the original inhabitants lived.
Houses, steps a chapel and a moat were all cut into the rock to make it habitable, but the name 'Fort' belies its actual use as a functioning village and not a military camp.
This fortified village controlled the route to the gulf of Saint-Tropez which, at the time, was called “Le Freinet”, the ash-tree, because it was peculiarly characteristic of the plain of Grimaud and its surroundings.
Archaeologists had hoped to find some evidence of the well-known tradition – that these were the ruins of a Saracen fortress, from which the Muslims of Spain launched their raids in Provence and beyond, between the end of the ninth and the end of the tenth century, but in fact they only found the trace of a medieval village society of about thirty houses.
The inhabitants stayed a little more than a hundred years, leaving at the end of the twelfth century before descending to found the present village of La Garde-Freinet.
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Directions
Access tothe site is either from the Tourist Office, Place de la Mairie car park, towards 'Aire de La Planète' - signposted footpath, length 60 mins return. Or from 'La Croix des Maures' car park - signposted footpath, length 40 mins return.
