The Fauvist viewpoints and the Collioure windmill

In the summer of 1905 Henri Matisse and André Derain worked side by side in Collioure and came back to Paris with the canvases that got them called fauves — wild beasts. The town has since marked twenty of those paintings on the ground: reproductions set on stands at the exact spot where each was made, along a walking route called the Chemin du Fauvisme, so you can hold up the picture and see how little the view has changed.

The route matters to a photographer for a simpler reason than art history: it climbs. Starting near the château and working south and up, it leaves the crowded waterfront within five minutes and gives a rising series of views over the bay, the bell tower and the roofs. Fifteen minutes of gentle uphill brings you to the Moulin de la Cortina, a restored fourteenth-century windmill standing among olive trees, and from the terrace there the whole town lies below with the sea beyond and the Albères hills behind.

The hillside faces north and east over the town, so it is at its best in the morning, when the light is on the roofs and the water, or in the last half-hour, when the sun drops behind the ridge and the sea goes silver. Midday from up here is flat and hazy in summer.

It is a public path and free, but it is a path — uneven, stepped in places, and hot in the afternoon between May and September. Take water and shoes, and allow twenty minutes each way rather than treating it as a two-minute detour.