The medieval village of Grimaud sits on a hill beneath the ruins of its eleventh-century castle, looking out over the whole gulf of Saint-Tropez. Cobbled lanes, stone houses, a restored windmill and a view running from Sainte-Maxime to the peninsula. Far less busy than Port-Grimaud below, and particularly beautiful late in the day.
Let us clear up the confusion straight away: Grimaud and Port-Grimaud are two separate places, five minutes apart. The second is a lagoon town built in the 1960s; the first is a village that has existed for a thousand years, clinging to its hill four kilometres from the sea. The coaches stop below. The upper village breathes.
The name comes from the Grimaldi family, granted the lordship in the eleventh century, the same family that still reigns in Monaco. The village grew under their protection, around a castle that controlled the whole gulf.
The castle ruins crown the village. Towers, curtain walls and roofless halls remain, restored and made safe, and you move freely among them. It is from here that you understand the site: on one side the whole gulf, Sainte-Maxime, the Saint-Tropez peninsula, the sea; on the other the Maures massif rising dark and wooded. On a clear day you can make out the Hyères islands.
Access is on foot from the village, a ten-minute climb. In summer the castle hosts concerts and performances, in a setting that needs no staging.
Coming back down you cross a village restored with taste: stone houses under vines, old doorways, stairways, and above all the rue des Templiers, the finest of them, lined with fifteenth-century Gothic arcades. At its end, the Romanesque church of Saint-Michel, plain, from the eleventh century.
A little apart, the Saint-Roch windmill, restored and back in working order, opens on certain days and is a reminder that the village lived on its wheat before it lived on its view. The Musée du Patrimoine, in an old house, tells the story of cork, wine and vines in the Maures in half an hour.
Late in the day, without hesitation. The light rakes across the gulf, the stone turns golden, the coaches have gone and the village recovers its calm. It is also when the terraces on the Place Neuve, under the plane trees, are at their best.
On Thursday mornings the market takes over and the village is lively, which is pleasant but makes parking difficult.
Grimaud takes an hour and a half, which makes it the natural companion to a morning at Port-Grimaud or a day in Saint-Tropez. The right order: the lagoon town in the morning, the beach in the afternoon, the village at sunset.
This guide is part of the address book of a private estate in Puget-sur-Argens, 45 minutes away, available for weddings and family stays. It is not open to visitors.
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