Tourtour and its nieghbourhoods

Guided visit of the village for groups, 1h1/2, by reservation at the tourist office.

One does not know who invited a dozen monks of Mazan to come to base an abbey on the grounds of Tourtour, but they came, and the official birth certificate carries the dated April 14, 1136 one. Floriège, or Floriye, or Florielle is a small river, sometimes very boxed, which is thrown in Argens. Mireille Maurel, historian of chartreuse of Verne, in an article devoted to Florièye evokes the road of these courageous monks cistercians: "Of Vivarais in Provence, how much long and exhausting the road". The places selected is still impresses of an austere beauty, still raised by the declining and cold lights of this afternoon of December during which the photographs of this page were taken. The abbey overhung a deep abyss which a bridge made it possible to cross, qualified of Romain, beautiful invoice and great height. In the narrow and poor small valley of Florièye, the monks raise wood houses before drawing up the first walls of the abbey. Then, the decision is made to move towards Thoronet; the reasons are always obscure; some sections of wall still mark the site of the old abbey, in the middle of the vegetation of Provence, soon it will be the lapse of memory. This abbey will not be forgotten abbots of Thoronet, they took the practice to go to collect itself in the vault of Our-Lady-of-Florièye during their establishment; it took six good hours to traverse the distance. Original buildings, there remains the chorus of the vault, the nave having been rebuilt on an unspecified date, and some sections of wall of the convent and sheep-fold, hidden, used by the farm which it is built on the spot.

The tower of Grimaud (or Grimaldi) is located at the north of the village, at the end of a long road leading to a splendid panorama giving on the High VAr and energy of the lights of Aups to the mounts of Cotignac: Bessillons. It would have been built by the lords of Aups, of the family of Blacas at the end of the 12° century or the beginning of the 13°. It commemorates the victory of the lord of Antibes, Grimaldi, against a buckwheat army coming from Fraxinet (the Freinet Guard).