France
Collioure
Matisse's fishing port, where the light bends colour until red boats glow against violet water.
Red boats bob against a fortified church whose bell tower once served as the harbour lighthouse, the bay framed by Pyrenean foothills dropping into Mediterranean blue. Collioure, on France's Catalan coast, is where Matisse and Derain spent the summer of 1905 and painted the wild colour that got them branded fauves — and the colour they painted is in the light itself.
Collioure has been a Catalan fishing port for as long as anyone has kept records, its harbour guarded by the Château Royal and watched from above by Fort Saint-Elme. Matisse and Derain worked here through 1905, and the town has marked the Chemin du Fauvisme — reproductions of their paintings set up at the exact spots where they were made, so you stand where Matisse stood and see the roofs he saw; the modern art museum keeps the story going. The other trade is anchovies: the town's salting houses still cure them by hand in wooden barrels, as they have done for generations, and the terraced vineyards above the bay make the AOC Collioure and Banyuls wines, the reds and the sweet fortified ones, within sight of the boats.
Solo
Follow the Fauvism trail through the harbour with the reproduction panels — standing where Matisse stood, seeing what he saw, is a solo art pilgrimage that needs no guide.
Couple
The harbour at sunset, the church tower silhouetted and the boats glowing against violet water, is the painting Matisse made — now yours to walk into.
- Matisse and Derain painted here in 1905 and invented Fauvism — the Chemin du Fauvisme puts their pictures on panels where they stood.
- The fortified church juts into the bay with a bell tower that once served as the lighthouse — the most painted building on this coast.
- Anchovy houses still salt-cure the catch by hand in wooden barrels, the town's other art.
- The beach sits in a sheltered cove with the Pyrenees falling into the sea to either side, and the Banyuls vineyards terraced above.
Collioure anchovies, salt-cured in wooden barrels, laid on toast with butter or in a Catalan salad on the quay.
Crème catalane — a cracked burnt-sugar crust over orange-and-cinnamon custard — served ice-cold.
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