Porquerolles looks back on an eventful history, which became a double victory of beauty.
Early on, among others, Celts, Etruscans, Greeks and Romans were interested in the island and Napoleon settled soldiers there in the 19th century. Not everything was always peaceful, as documented, among other things, by the fortification Fort Sainte-Agathe, which dominates the island, visible from far away.
Things became romantic at the beginning of the 20th century, when the Belgian engineer François Joseph Fournier bought the island and gave it to his young wife Sylvia. From then on, the focus became more and more on nature worth protecting and preserving, and when in 1971 the French state took over the island from its descendants, Porquerolles immediately became part of the Port-Cros National Park and the beauty of nature could flourish unhindered.
Man-made beauty, aesthetics and art, on the other hand, are celebrated at the Fondation Carmignac, which – located in the middle of the national park and only accessible on foot – is an arthistorical highlight on the Côte d‘Azur.
The Fondation shows a part of the art collection of the French art collector Edouard Carmignac and is located to a large extent underground, because for the new museum building was not allowed to be built above ground in the national park. The result is an unprecedented temple of art with its own rules and rituals that lead visitors into mind- fulness in a special way. What extraordinary good fortune for every art-loving guest to have the chance to immerse himself almost alone in the works of Gerhard Richter, Andy Warhol, Peter Lindbergh, Roy Lichtenstein, Miquel Barceló and many other artists.
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