Roquebrune-sur-Argens is a medieval village in the Var, tucked against its red rock between Fréjus and Le Muy. People come for its vaulted lanes and the rue des Portiques, its Romanesque chapel, the Aréna lake below, and a half-day that willingly turns into a climb up the rock.
The village was built tight, its back to the rock, facing the Argens plain. What remains is an almost intact medieval plan: lanes that climb in steps, passages under vaults, old doorways some of which still carry their hinges, and the rue des Portiques, the most photographed of them, where the houses project over stone arcades above the street. That is where you understand the village: people walked under cover, in the shade in summer, sheltered in winter.
Half an hour is enough to walk round it. An hour if you look up, which the village deserves: dated lintels, mullioned windows, a fountain on every little square.
The chapel of Saint-Pierre, set apart from the village near the cemetery, is one of the oldest religious buildings in the Var, an eleventh-century Romanesque sanctuary built on still older foundations. The parish church of Saint-Pierre-Saint-Paul, in the heart of the village, dates from the sixteenth century and holds a notable altarpiece.
The Maison du Patrimoine tells the local story, from the neolithic to the last harvest, in an old house in the centre. Its virtue is being short and well done.
More unexpectedly, the village is home to a Maison du Chocolat et du Cacao, a private museum devoted to the cocoa bean and its transformation, with a tasting. Children ask to go back, and so do adults.
Below the village, a former gravel pit has become a stretch of water fringed with lawns, a flat promenade and play areas. You cannot swim, but you can picnic, hire a pedal boat in season, and walk or push a pram round it in half an hour. It is where to end the visit once the children have exhausted the lanes.
The village is the natural starting point for the climb up the Rocher de Roquebrune. A visit in the morning, lunch on the square and the ascent late in the day make a full day. The path is open all year; in summer it is better to reverse the order and climb at dawn.
The village square has its cafés and one or two honest tables. On Friday mornings the market sets up under the plane trees and is worth the trip in itself: goat's cheeses from the hills, olives, vegetables from the growers on the plain.
This guide is part of the address book of a private estate in Puget-sur-Argens, 12 minutes away, available for weddings and family stays. It is not open to visitors.
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