Discover Nans-les-Pins
A village in the Var of 5,200 inhabitants at the northern foot of the Sainte-Baume, three quarters covered in forest, where the Huveaune rises. A tourist resort since 1932, in the Sainte-Baume regional nature park.
Nans-les-Pins occupies the plain that stretches at the northern foot of the Sainte-Baume massif, in the Var, between the mountain to the south and the Mont Aurélien to the north. The commune had 5,215 inhabitants in 2023, up more than 12% since 2017, over nearly 48 square kilometres, three quarters of them wooded. It belongs to the Provence Verte agglomeration and, since 20 December 2017, to the Sainte-Baume regional nature park.
The village
Today's town developed in the plain, at about 400 metres, after the gradual abandonment of the hilltop village whose ruins still overlook the rooftops. The shaded cours Général-de-Gaulle is its centre: the tourist office, the cafés and the Sunday market are there. The Grand-Rue climbs from it to the Saint-Laurent church and the Miséricorde chapel, where the mountain paths begin.
A long history
An Iron Age oppidum occupied the Sainte-Croix hill around 200 BC. Old Nans, a fortified village recorded in 780, received a castle in the 12th century. The chemin des Roys, which kings and pilgrims followed from Saint-Maximin to the grotto of Mary Magdalene, crosses the territory and left the Béguines oratory, of 1516. The Miséricorde chapel dates from 1623, the church bell from 1670. Closer to us, the cooperative winery of the Vignerons de Nans, built in 1913, recalls that wine remains an activity of the plain, carried on today by the Domaine de Triennes.
The mountain
To the south, the Sainte-Baume raises its limestone cliff and its 2,076-hectare state forest, a mountain beech wood unique in Provence, protected for fifteen centuries by the religious communities of the sanctuary. The grotto of Mary Magdalene, kept by the Dominicans since 1295, and the Saint-Pilon chapel, at 994 metres, can be reached on foot from Nans through the hills or from the Hostellerie, on the Plan-d'Aups plateau. The Huveaune rises in the commune, in the Castelette valley, and builds over its first metres the travertine pools that made the place famous.
Today
Classified as a tourist resort since 1932, Nans-les-Pins lives from its visitors, its eighteen-hole golf course on the Châteauneuf estate, the vine and the forest. The village is about forty minutes from Marseille and Aix-en-Provence by the A8 motorway and the Saint-Maximin exit, and less than an hour from Toulon. Access, transport and forest safety information is gathered on the Practical information page.