Luxury villa Saint Tropez

strong>St-Tropez
One of the strangest but most prophetic legends along the coast has it that St-Tropez's first incarnation, the Greek colony of Athenopolis,was founded by Praxiteles'famous model Phryne, who had a face like a toad but the body of a goddess. Put on trial in Athens for unseemly behaviour, she lifted up her skirt, astonishing the jury with her charms, and was acquitted on condition that she leave Athens. She ended up out here in the Wild West of antiquity, married to a Ligurian chieftain.Together they founded Athenopolis, but the story has a sad end: Phryne was sacrificed to the Ligurian gods with the request that they should please keep foreigners away in the future.<br />
In AD68,Torpes, a Christian officer of Nero, was beheaded in Pisa. As anyone who has studied the Lives ofthe Saints knows, the Romans had no lack of ingenuity in dealing with martyrs; in this case, they buried Torpes'head in Pisa and put his body in a boat with a dog and a cock,who wereslowly todevour it. But the animals had no appetite and their boat floated safely ali the way to Athenopolis (the Roman Heraclea Cacabria) which eventually adopted StTorpes'name.The saintly trunk was hidden and lost during the Saracen attacks, one of which destroyed St-Tropez in 739.<br />
St-Tropez was repopulated in 1470 with settlers imported from Genoa. Good King Rene of Provence exempted them from taxes in return for defending the coast, and until the i7th century the Tropeziens enjoyed a special autonomous status under their Capitaines de Ville. Their most glorious moment carne on 15 June 1637, when they courageously beat off an attack by 22 Spanish galleons, an event annually celebrated in the Bravade des Espagnols. Later invaders were more successful.The first famous visitor from the outside world, Guy de Maupassant, drifted into the port in i88os and in his pre-syphilitic madness gave the villagers a preview ofthe 1960S. In 1892 the postimpressionist painter Paul Signac was forced by the weather to a nchor h is yacht at St-Tropez; enchanted, he bought a villa called La Hune and invited his friends down to paint. St-Tropez was a revelation to many: Matisse, who had previously worked in a ratherdark style, carne down in 1904 and produced his key, incandescent picture of nudes on a St-Tropez beach, Luxe, calme et volupte, and joined the Fauvist revolution begun bySignac's friends Derain,Vlaminck,Van Dongenand Dufy;today their hot coloured canvases illuminate the town's locai museum.