Guided tour | Toulon Olé Olé

“Toulon Olé Olé! is a stunning guided tour of Toulon, discovering its sulphurous past as a purveyor of a wide variety of pleasures, designed to give sailors from all over the world the satisfaction of a successful port of call!

We’ll evoke the grandeur and misery of the mythical Chicago district, where a hundred or so “American bars” enabled sailors on the town to restore their alcohol levels, which were incompatible with standing upright.
Chicago should not be confused with the Quartier réservé, which disappeared in the 1950s. We’ll go to the aptly-named Place du Pavé d’Amour, to recall the “houses” where assembly-line work was already practiced…

In front of the gateway to the Jesuits’ royal seminary on the Corderie, we’ll take a look back at the 18th-century affair between Father Girard and the young Marie-Catherine Cadière. A sexual scandal triggered by this Jesuit confessor accused of having bewitched (and more) a young Toulon woman.
And then we’ll meet Berthe de Toulon, half Régine, half Madame Claude, matchmaker and hostess of Toulon soirées between the wars.

In the same spirit, we’ll be evoking “ les petites alliées ” (from the title of writer Claude Farrère’s novel), young women who don’t necessarily wait for the bonds of marriage to consummate their pleasures.
Prostitution, the oldest profession in the world, was certainly prevalent in Toulon in the Middle Ages and during the Revolution, according to historical accounts.
Today, only a few physical traces of this past remain, but there’s enough left to bring them back to life and fill them with stories and anecdotes during our inevitably “goguette” stroll.