La Ciotat was perhaps the Burgus Civitatis of the itinerary of Antony, but in time it came to be known—in the Catalan tongue—as Bort de Nostre Cieuta, and it is so given in an ancient charter which conceded certain rights to the Marseillais.
In 1365 La Ciotat passed to the monks of the Abbey of St. Victor, but for a short time it was in the possession of the Catalans, who were the partisans of the Antipope Pierre de Luna. Few towns of its size in all France have had so varied a career as La Ciotat, until it finally settled down to the more or less prosaic affairs of later years. Forty families formed its first population, but, in the reign of François I., its population was twelve thousand or more, a number which has not perceptibly increased since.
During the pest of 1720, which fell so hard upon Marseilles, and indeed upon nearly all of the ports of maritime Provence, La Ciotat was saved from the affection by the observance of a stringent quarantine. To a great extent this was due to the prudence and fearlessness of the women. All entrance to the city was rigorously refused to strangers, and, when the troops from the garrison at Marseilles were sent here that they might be quartered in a place of safety, the women armed themselves with sticks and stones and formed a barrier, dehors des murs, and drove the soldiery off as if they had been an attacking foe. This is one of those Amazonian feats which prove the valour of the women of other days.
La Ciotat was frequently attacked by the Barbary pirates before these vermin were swept from the seas by the intervention of the two great republics, France and the United States. The English, too, attacked the intrepid little town, and there are brave tales of the valour of the inhabitants when bombarded by the guns of the Seahorse in 1818.
Directly in front of La Ciotat, at the foot of the Côte de Saint Cyr, on the eastern shore of the bay, was an old Greek colony known to geographers as Tauroentum. Rich and powerful in its own right, Tauroentum rivalled its neighbour Marseilles, but the fleets of Pompey and Cæsar had one of those old-time sea-fights off its quays, and the city, having suffered greatly at the time, never recovered its prosperity, and the more opulent and powerful Marseilles became the metropolis for all time. The monumental remains to be observed to-day are mostly covered with the sands of time, and only the antiquarian and archæologist will get pleasure or satisfaction from any fragmentary evidences which may be unearthed. The subject is a vast and most interesting one, no doubt, but the enthusiast in such matters is referred to Lentheric’s great work on “La Provence Maritime.”
La Ciotat, with its workmen’s houses and its shipyard, will not detain one long. One will be more interested in making his way eastward along the coast, when every kilometre will open up new splendours of landscape.
Opposite La Ciotat is the hamlet of Les Lèques, well sheltered in the bay of the same name. Lamartine, en route for the Orient, compared it with enthusiasm to the Bay of Naples, a simile which has been used with regard to many another similar spot, but hardly with as much of appropriateness as here. Said Lamartine: “C’est un de ces nombreux chefs-d’œuvre que Dieu a répandus partout.”
From Les Lèques it is but a step to Bandol, a place not mentioned in the note-books of many travellers, though to the French it is already recognized as a “station hivernale et de bains de mer.” This is a pity, for it will soon go the way of the other resorts.
Bandol is a small town of the Var, possessed of a remarkably beautiful and sheltered site, and, since it numbers but a trifle over two thousand souls, and has no palace hotels as yet, it may well be accounted as one of the places on the beaten track of Riviera travel which has not yet become wholly spoiled.
Bandol’s principal business is the growing of immortelles and artichokes, with enough of the fishing industry to give a liveliness and picturesqueness to the wharves of the little port.