Hyères

Hyères is a town of 57,000 on the Var coast, between Toulon and Le Lavandou. Its full name is Hyères-les-Palmiers, and it earns it: some 7,000 palms grow in the town, and it has been the centre of French palm cultivation since the nineteenth century.

It was also the first winter resort on the Riviera — before Nice, before Cannes. The English came from the 1760s, Queen Victoria stayed in 1892, and Robert Louis Stevenson wrote that he had only been happy once, and that was at Hyères.

The old town

Medieval Hyères is up the hill, two kilometres back from the sea, and is a proper hill town of stepped lanes and vaulted passages that most people on the coast never see.

• Tour des Templiers — the twelfth-century Templar commandery tower on the Place Massillon, now an exhibition space
• Porte Massillon and Porte des Princes — the surviving gates
• Collégiale Saint-Paul — twelfth-century, with a collection of several hundred ex-votos
• Parc Saint-Bernard — terraced gardens climbing to the castle, planted with everything that will grow in this climate, which is almost everything

Villa Noailles

Above the town, and the reason architects come to Hyères. Built from 1923 by Robert Mallet-Stevens for the patrons Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles, it is one of the first modernist houses in France — a white cubist assembly of terraces, with a cubist garden by Gabriel Guevrekian.

Man Ray filmed Les Mystères du Château de Dé in it in 1929; Buñuel, Cocteau, Giacometti and Dalí all passed through. It is now an art and design centre, open free, and hosts an international fashion and photography festival each spring.

The castle

The ruins of the Fos family’s fortress crown the hill at 200 m. Twenty minutes up through the Parc Saint-Bernard, and the view takes in the salt pans, the peninsula and all three islands.

The peninsula and the salt pans

South of the town the presqu’île de Giens runs out to sea on a double sand bar — a tombolo, one of only a handful in the world and the only one in Europe of this scale. Between the two arms lie the Salins des Pesquiers, former salt works now a protected wetland with flamingos, and beside them the Almanarre beach, which is one of the best windsurfing waters in France.

The islands

The Îles d’Hyères — the golden isles — are the real attraction:

• Porquerolles — the largest, car-free, with white sand beaches; ferries from La Tour Fondue on the Giens peninsula, 15 minutes
• Port-Cros — a national park on land and sea, with an underwater snorkelling trail
• Île du Levant — nine-tenths military, one-tenth the naturist village of Héliopolis, founded in 1931

Getting to Hyères

• By train — a branch from Toulon, about 20 minutes; TGV from Paris to Toulon then on.
• By air — Toulon-Hyères airport is in the town, with Paris and seasonal flights.
• By car — the A57 from Toulon. In August the road down the Giens peninsula is very slow. See parking in France.

Around

• The islands — from La Tour Fondue and the Port d’Hyères
• Le Lavandou — 25 km east, twelve beaches
• Toulon — 20 km west, with the harbour and the cable car up Mont Faron
• Massif des Maures — inland, cork oak and chestnut
• Bormes-les-Mimosas — 20 minutes, and February for the mimosa

When to go

April to June and September to October. Hyères has the mildest winter on this coast and stays green all year, and the old town works even in January — which cannot be said of most of the Var.

See Provence and when to visit.

Weather in Hyères

Updated: 25 August 2026