Toulon — City & Bay: private taxi tour

Toulon is a city best visited with a guide, and I take you where it deserves to be seen. We start with old Toulon: Place Puget with its ever-damp Fontaine des Trois Dauphins, the Cours Lafayette market that smells of cheese and olives from the morning, narrow lanes lined with old pastel houses. Sainte-Marie Cathedral, Romanesque-Gothic, hides an explosive Baroque behind its dark walls. Then we go up Mont Faron on the historic little cable car. Five hundred metres above the sea, the view takes your breath away: the naval harbour, the most beautiful in Europe according to Vauban who fortified it, frigates at anchor, the Saint-Mandrier peninsula and, on a clear day, as far as the Hyères islands. The Provence landings memorial at the summit recalls the fighting of August 1944. We come back down to the centre and visit the National Navy Museum, housed in the monumental gate of the former arsenal. Figureheads, ship models, two centuries of naval history. A quiet return to the starting point. Call +33 6 98 46 63 34.