The Citadel, a time-honoured workcamp

Place : Saint-Tropez (Var)

Participants: Adults

Workcamp description:

Saint Tropez’s citadel sits high on a rocky outcrop above the town and bay, providing an impressive setting for your work on the citadel’s counterscarp. You’ll learn dry stone building techniques with an experienced trainer and together, you’ll continue work to restore a retaining wall facing the sea with a footpath above it. The wall is one hundred metres long and has mostly collapsed but this is the last session of work to restore it.

Workcamp programme:

• Move earth and sort building stone
• Dismantle the remains of the wall in piles
• Strip back rubble to the foundations
• Rebuild the dry stone wall

Building technique: Dry stone masonry

Special bonus: The workcamp takes place in September, so you’ll still have the summer sun but none of the crowds that mob the Côte d’Azur in July and August.

Accommodation: In campsite chalets, with shared rooms, 20 minutes’ drive from the workcamp.

Workcamp life:

Help out, in turn, with daily tasks (cooking, cleaning). Building work in the mornings, Mon-Fri. Free time in afternoons and weekends, with a choice of group excursions and activities.

Some ideas for excursions: Visits to the seaside resorts of the Côte d’Azur but also into the back country of the Var to see the La Verne Monastery, walks in the Massif des Maures or discovering the Salins d’Hyères sea salt basins.

A bit of history:

Saint Tropez is best known for its port, beaches, police and of course, it’s citadel!

While it has reigned over the town for 400 years, our teams of volunteers have been carefully working to conserve and restore it for the last 20 summers.

The citadel is a pre-Vauban construction and remains one of the only sizeable monuments of this type on the Var coastline.

The first reference to it dates back to 1583 when a record refers to a building on the “Colline des Moulins” hill. Later, in 1607 the castle keep was completed, with its thick hexagonal walls encircling a large internal courtyard.

Today, the citadel houses the town’s maritime history museum, where visitors can learn about famous seafaring explorers as well as the men and women who lived in the town and port.