Fotógrafos en Collioure y la Costa Bermeja

Collioure sits on the Côte Vermeille, the last twenty kilometres of French Mediterranean coast before Spain, and it is small enough to photograph properly in ninety minutes. The image everyone knows is the bell tower of Notre-Dame-des-Anges: a round tower with a pink dome that stands at the water's edge, because it was the harbour's medieval lighthouse long before it was attached to a church. In front of it the Plage Boramar is shingle rather than sand, with painted boats drawn up and ochre and rose houses stacked behind. On the other side of the beach the Château Royal fills a whole headland — thirteenth-century, built for the kings of Majorca, reworked by Vauban, now a ticketed museum — and beyond it the coves of Port d'Avall and the Faubourg run south under the ramparts. Matisse and Derain spent the summer of 1905 here and invented Fauvism doing it, which is why twenty reproductions now stand around the town on the Chemin du Fauvisme, each one placed where its painting was made; the walk climbs to the old windmill above the bay, which is the best wide view of the town for anyone willing to spend fifteen minutes going up. Behind and above, the Collioure and Banyuls vineyards are terraced on dry-stone walls so steep they are still worked by hand, with the thirteenth-century Tour Madeloc on the ridge at 650 metres and Port-Vendres, the working fishing port, three kilometres down the coast. Practical truths: July and August are full and parking is genuinely difficult, the tramontane wind blows hard and often, and May, June, September and early October are the months that work.