Description
The Royal Tower, or “Grosse Tour,” is a gun tower built in Toulon at Pointe de Pipady in the early 16th century (1514) on the orders of Louis XII to protect the harbor from enemy incursions. It is designated a Historic Monument.
Slightly oval in shape, the fort measures 60m in diameter and around 20m at its highest point. Begun in 1514 and completed in 1524, it was built with luxury and comfort in mind, to enable the garrison to hold out long under the best possible conditions in the event of a siege: wide entrenchment, a vast and beautiful upper platform able to support numerous cannonballs, a crenellated counterscarp gallery to which one could communicate from inside the tower via an underground gallery, low batteries with powerful furnaces for reddening cannonballs, casemates of various sizes, fallback rooms safe from any bombs or cannonballs, cisterns, stores and so on...
2 centuries after its construction, the tower was no longer considered a defensive structure, and was mainly used as a prison. During the 1870/1871 war, the Tour Royale was used as a depository for Banque de France gold bullion. Around 1900, it was completely disarmed to serve as a storehouse for the torpedo service. During the Second World War, the Tour Royale was occupied by the Germans and armed with anti-aircraft guns, and was almost destroyed by American bombing raids.
The Tour Royale is open to the public on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays in summer (admission €2 per person aged 6 and over). Guided tours at 10:30 am and 3:30 pm
