Tour Royale: Toulon’s Renaissance Harbor Fortification
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.4
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- France
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- French
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Tower
On this page10 sections
History
Tour Royale, also known as La Grosse Tour, is a French Renaissance artillery fortification at the entrance to Toulon’s Petit Rade in France. Commissioned by the French crown in 1513 and built between 1514 and 1524, it was the first in a long series of forts intended to protect Toulon’s strategically important harbor from enemy ships.
Construction and early capture
King Louis XII ordered the project at the request of the bishop of Toulon and the seneschal of Provence. The Italian military engineer Jean-Antoine de la Porta designed the fort, whose construction began during Louis XII’s reign and was completed under his successor, Francis I. The crown financed most of the 30,000-florin cost, giving the building its royal name, Tour Royale.
The fort’s first military episode came immediately after its completion. Its commander, Jehan du Mottet, accepted 500 écus and surrendered the tower to imperial forces serving Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor. The garrison left, and 300 Spanish mercenaries occupied the fort. The episode produced the Toulon expression “to be sold like the Grosse Tour.” After the imperial troops withdrew, the tower held the chevalier Bertrande de la Garde, who had fought for Charles V against Francis I. He became the first of many political prisoners confined in its underground cells.
War, refuge, and harbor defense
In 1543, during a temporary alliance between Francis I and Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman sultan, the Ottoman fleet spent the winter at Toulon. A royal order evacuated the city, and artillery from its ramparts was stored in the Tour Royale until the fleet’s departure.
The fort also became involved in the religious and political conflicts of sixteenth-century France. After news of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre reached Toulon in 1572, commander Nicolas de Pignan sheltered the city’s Protestant families inside the tower. In 1596, during the Wars of Religion, the commander of the Château d’If, a fortified island stronghold and prison in Marseille’s harbor, met the Duke of Guise at the Tour Royale. The two men, both involved in the struggle for control of Provence, discussed expelling the Spaniards and the Catholic League from Marseille, which had declared itself an independent republic.
In 1634, Cardinal Richelieu ordered further improvements to Toulon’s harbor defenses. Fort Balaguier was built opposite the Tour Royale, and Fort de l’Éguillette was later added in the same opposing defensive system. These forts helped compensate for the tower’s inability to close the entire harbor entrance with its own fire.
Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century changes
In 1679, Vauban, Louis XIV’s chief military engineer, described the Tour Royale as a very fine work with several floors and batteries, but judged it unfinished. He proposed another cannon level, a battery at the foot of the tower, and the lowering of nearby hills to give the gunners a clearer view. Some improvements followed from 1680. Elements of a further program proposed in 1701, including a keep, parapet, and wall forming a defensive walkway, were partly carried out. The tower was equipped with forty cannon.
During the 1707 siege of Toulon, part of the War of the Spanish Succession, the conflict over the Spanish throne, the Tour Royale actively contributed to the defense of the port. It was not itself attacked. Toulon resisted the combined assault of a British-Dutch fleet and the army of Eugene of Savoy, an imperial commander fighting against France.
The construction of Fort Lamalgue in 1770 reduced the Tour Royale’s importance in the harbor’s defensive system. The tower then served mainly as a prison for military prisoners, Corsican rebels, royalists, and, during the French Revolution, supporters of the Republic. Prison conditions were extremely harsh, with an average life expectancy of only a few months.
From the Napoleonic period to the world wars
In 1798, Joséphine de Beauharnais watched Napoleon Bonaparte’s fleet leave Toulon for the Egyptian campaign from the tower’s upper platform. The fleet consisted of 200 ships. Napoleon ordered repairs to the building the following year.
The fort continued to change during the nineteenth century. Its drawbridge was replaced by a fixed bridge in 1819. The chapel was removed and the cemetery abandoned in 1825, while the armament was strengthened during the 1840s. During the Franco-German War of 1870, France’s gold reserves were secretly stored in the fort. In the First World War, the tower served as barracks for troops awaiting departure for the front and as an internment site for German prisoners of war.
A German garrison occupied the Tour Royale during the Second World War. Allied bombardments in 1943 and 1944 heavily damaged the building.
Protection and civic use
The Tour Royale was classified as a historic monument on 11 April 1947. In 1951 it became an annex of the National Maritime Museum, France’s museum of maritime history and naval heritage. The Ministry of Defence transferred it to the city of Toulon in 2006, after which it operated as a municipal museum.
The city later acquired former military land north of the tower and created Tour Royale Park, including a coastal promenade. A memorial to French submariners who disappeared at sea or died in service was erected there in 2009 and designated a national monument in 2010. The park also contains the FNRS III bathyscaphe, a crewed deep-sea submersible that reached a depth of 4,000 metres in 1954, setting a world record.
Remains
The circular artillery tower
The Tour Royale is a large circular stone fortification on the cap de la Manègue at the entrance to the Petit Rade, in the Pointe de Pipady area. Its broad round shape led Toulon residents to call it La Grosse Tour or Grande Tour. The building measures approximately 60 metres across, while its walls reach 7 metres in thickness. It belongs to the Italian Renaissance type known as a torrione, a round artillery tower designed both to withstand cannon fire and to deliver it.
At the center is a core containing rooms on three levels, a casemated battery, and an upper platform. A casemate is a vaulted, protected chamber used for artillery. The rooms have vaulted ceilings, and the central core was reached across a drawbridge, later replaced by the fixed bridge installed in 1819.
Defensive interiors and former facilities
Two cisterns, circular galleries, and cannon embrasures form part of the surviving defensive arrangement. Embrasures are openings through which cannon fire. The casemates, galleries, and embrasures remain, while the underground cells have been filled in. The fort was equipped with forty cannon, although the range of its weapons did not allow the tower to seal the entire harbor entrance.
The building formerly included a chapel, barracks, hospital, and cemetery. The chapel, barracks, and hospital were removed, and the cemetery was abandoned in 1825. These changes belong to the tower’s long transformation from an active harbor fortification into a building used chiefly for imprisonment and later civic and museum purposes.
Tour Royale Park
Former military grounds north of the tower now form the landscaped Tour Royale Park. The park contains the memorial to French submariners who disappeared at sea or died in service, as well as the FNRS III bathyscaphe. The bathyscaphe’s 1954 descent to 4,000 metres gives the park a maritime and technological connection to the naval history represented by the fort.
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