Bay of Cannes and Cannes Coastline Photo by G.Wilson

Site of Film Festival The Cannes Festival Theatre Photo by G.Wilson

The French city of Cannes is known widely for its annual film extravaganza, but it is also closely associated with two lovely islands lying off the city's eastern extremity. Few visitors to that beautiful place fail to take the fifteen minute ferry ride across the tranquil waters of the Bay of Cannes to the historic Lerin Islands.

View from our Condo SE to Isle St.Marguerite & and St. Honorat Photo by G.Wilson

The smaller of the two islands is called L'ile Saint-Honorat. It bears the name of the son of a Roman consul, a gentle, pious man who left home and family to found on this fertile retreat what became a celebrated monastery called Abbaye de Lerins. It attracted a community of 500 eminent disciples whose doctrine was spread throughout Christendom by monks and missionaries one of whom was St. Patrick.

I'ile Saint Honorat

In addition to their studies, these devout individuals also laboured in the fields about the monastery creating by careful cultivation a tiny paradise of trees and flowers. The monks of the Abbey of Lerins still worship and still work this land. They produce with a secret distillation process a fine liquor called Lerina and a delicately delicious acacia honey, both hightly prized by the French and foreign visitors to the sanctuary.

I'ile Saint-Honorat

Lerin Abbey on I'ile Saint-Honorat photo by G. Wilson

Left Montastery Fortified Right Abbey Notre-Dame des Lerins

Fortified Monastery Photo by G. Wilson

In addition to the pious and the peaceful, this prosperous settlement attracted Saracens and barbarians who ran amok pillaging, plundering and murdering. In order to protect themselves from the desecration and deprivation of foreign invaders, the residents of St. Honorat built in the 12th century a great structure called a Fortified Monastery whose metre-thick stone walls were well protected on three sides by the waters of the Mediterranean.

This immense structure which once contained eighty-six room, is open to the public who marvel at the men who constructed this fortress so long ago. A huge cistern occupies the heart of the building in which sufficient water could be stored for the longest of sieges.

Wall of Fortified Monastery Photo by G. Wilson

A worn, narrow, circular stairway leads to a small doorway at the top through which one emerges to spectacular views. To the north, the city of Cannes wedged between the beach, the blue sea and the looming mountains of the Maritime Alps. To the south, the shimmering waters of the magnificent Mediterranean stretch wawy to the horizon.

Inside Fortified Monastery Photo by G. Wilson

Another View of Inside of Fortified Monastery Photo by G. Wilson

View from the top of Fortified Monastery Photo by G. Wilson

Mediterranean Moat Photo by G. Wilson

During World War II another breed of barbarian - the Nazis - occupied the island and built along its west coast a string of ominous, ugly concrete bunkers. These sad reminders of that terrible time remain now only as sullen subjects for the comments of curious tourists. To nullify the baseness of the Nazis's sites of savagery and sadism, the familiar symbol of the human spirit to prevail over evil occupies a dominant place beside the highway out of Cannes - Winston Churchill's watchword - V for Victory.

Churchill's Indomitable Spirit Photo by G. Wilson

Ste. Marguerite Island and Fort photo by G.Wilson

Royal Fort on Ste. Marguerite Island Photo br G. Wilson

Royal Fort Photo by G.Wilson

Ste. Marguerite, the larger of the two Lerin Islands, is named after Honorat's equally pious sister and is closer to Cannes. Charming visitors with shaded walks through woods of fragrant maritime pine and eucalyptus trees, the island offers a restful refuge from the hustle and bustle of Cannes.

Dominating the crags of its rocky shore is Fort Royal, a star-shaped fortification occupying the site of a Roman fort. It was constructed in the early 1600s under Cardinal Richelieu. Captured by the Spanish in 1635, the fort was recaptured two years later by Napoleon. It currently serves as a youth hostel and a museum of the sea with items recovered from the depths of ancient Roman and Saracen ship wrecks.

Cardinal Jules Mazaran,Louis XIV's First Minister

At one time the fort served as a prison, its numbers including an inmate made famous by the great French writer Alexander Dumas.

Alexandre Dumas (pere)

Alexandre Dumas, pere, (1802-1870) [his son, known as Alexandre Dumas, fils, was also a writer of some fame] was born on July 24, 1802 in the town of Villers-Cotterts. Dumas senior was the son of Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, a French General, and Marie-Louise Lisabeth Labouret, the daughter of an innkeeper. Thomas was the son of the Marquis Alexandre-Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie who served the government of France as Général commissaire in the Artillery in the colony of Saint-Domingue (now part of Haiti) and his black slave Marie-Césette Dumas. This made Alexandre Dumas a quadroon, a fact that prevented Alexandre receiving the acceptance in society his fame merited. President Jacques Chirac admitted this was the result of racism.

Dumas was buried where he was born until November 30, 2002, when Chirac ordered the exhumation of his body. In a new coffin draped in blue velvet cloth flanked by Republican Guards costumed as Athos, Porthos and Aramis - the three musketeers - Dumas's body was transported to the Parthenon of Paris where it joined such luminaries as Victor Hugo and Voltaire also buried there. Dumas's home, Le Chateau Monte Cristo, is outside Paris and is open to the public.

Dumas was one of the most famous French writers of the 19th century. No writer was more widely read. He is best known for historical novels of high adventure which captured the imagination of the public who eagerly awaited each subsequent saga serialized in local newspaper. Novels like The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo are fast-paced adventure tales blending far-fetched history and fiction.

Isolated Iron Cell of the Man In the Iron Mask

Another of his tales fostered the myth of The Man In The Iron Mask. This strange story, a fusion of fact and fiction, has fascinated writers throughout the centuries, their number including Voltaire.

On the 30 of April 1687 the massive iron doors of Fort Royal opened to admit a most unusual prisoner. Known to the world only as the Man in the Iron Mask, this unknown individual was born in darkness and nourished in shadows. While a closely guarded captive, this very, very important prisoner was always treated with the greatest of care and consideration. His life sentence was served in comfort, his every wish but one quickly granted by the governor himself, who minutely monitored the words and actions of his star inmate and promptly reported thereon to Cardinal Jules Mazaran, the prime minister of the Sun King, Louis XIV.

Louis XIV

Whatever the identity of this sad, celebrated soul, he harboured important secrets whose disclosure may have threatened an illustrious reputation, a prestigious career or perhaps even the throne itself. Consequently, he was locked up for life, eleven years of which he served in Cell 5, the second door on the right in Fort Royal prison. In 1698 this state prisoner was transferred to the Bastille where he died in 1703, his identity for all eternity to remain a secret inside an enigma wrapped in a mystery.

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Copyright © 2008 W. R. Wilson