4 Best Sights in Toulouse and the Languedoc, France

A slender jetty divides the Boramar Beach, beneath Notre-Dame-des-Anges, from the small landing area at the foot of the Château Royal. The castle served as the summer residence of the kings of Majorca from 1276 to 1344 and was remodeled by Vauban 500 years later.

Composed of narrow, cobbled streets and pretty houses, Collioure today is a living museum, as evidenced by the Chemin du Fauvisme (Fauvist Way), a pedestrian trail winding through town with 20 points where you can compare reproductions of noted Fauvist canvases with the actual scenes that were depicted in them. The information center, behind the Plage Boramar, has an excellent map. Viewfinder picture frames let you see how delightfully little of what the artists once admired has changed in the ensuing century. To the north, the rocky Îlot St-Vincent juts out into the sea, a modern lighthouse at its tip, and inland the Albères mountain range rises to connect the Pyrénées with the Mediterranean. The town harbor is a painting unto itself, framed by a 13th-century castle and a 17th-century church fortified with a tower.

No Matissses hold pride of place at the town's Musée d'Art Moderne, but the collection of 180 works deftly sums up the influence the artist had on this cité des peintures (city of paintings). Works by Cocteau, Valtat, and others are impressively housed in a picturesque, ivy-shrouded villa on a beautiful hillside site.

At the end of Boulevard du Boramar is the 17th-century church of Notre-Dame-des-Anges. It has exuberantly carved, gilded churrigueresque altarpieces by celebrated Catalan master Joseph Sunyer and a pink-dome bell tower that doubled as the original lighthouse.