Darse de Villefranche-sur-Mer: Guided tour of the Beaudouin pond and garden
In association with Department 06 and the Institut de la Mer de Villefranche (Imev), the ASPMV offers three possibilities for visits. -(1) The Royal Port of the Dock . This galley harbour began to be built during the 16th century by the dukes of Savoy (ally of Charles V), shortly after the siege of Nice in 1543 by a Franco-Ottoman fleet (François I and Soliman the Magnificent). It developed into a military port (with arsenal) during the 18th century under the reign of the kings of Piedmont/Sardinia (and dukes of Savoy), to become, paradoxically, an important cantonment of alpine hunters (troops in charge of the defense of mountain borders) after the region was annexed to France in 1860. It has become a marina (crafts and shipyards) and some of its historic buildings are home to oceanographic laboratories. - (2) the Galériens Hospital. It is one of the buildings on the dock, built in 1769, to treat the sick galériens. Transformed into a prison (an annex to the one in Nice), it was later converted in the 1880s by Russian and French researchers into an oceanographic station, one of the first in France. It still has this vocation today and therefore can only be visited very occasionally. -(3) The garden-terrace Beaudouin. It is a modernist garden of the fifties that we owe to a very famous architect, Eugène Beaudouin, and his wife, Joséphine Cals.Moved above the historic vaults of the dock he replaced a large barracks of dragons of Savoy (later occupied by alpine hunters) and destroyed in 1942. This garden, abandoned and vandalized after the disappearance of its designers, was partially restored and maintained by the ASPMV. It should soon be fully restored by the Department to which it recently belongs. It can only be visited by appointment or at JEP.