Nans-les-Pins

Heritage and history

Old Nans, the chapels and oratories, the grotto of Mary Magdalene and the memory of the massif.

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Old Nans

Before it moved down to the plain, Nans was a fortified hilltop village. Its ramparts and 12th-century castle are still legible in the garrigue.

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At the northern foot of the Sainte-Baume, the Huveaune rises in the Castelette valley and builds a run of clear travertine pools on its first metres.

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At Mazaugues, a 23-metre sandstone tower that held 3,100 cubic metres of ice. Built in 1880 and restored, it tells the story of a forgotten trade.

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High on the ridge, the Saint-Pilon chapel marks the summit of the pilgrimage and one of the widest views in Provence.

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On the shaded slope, a mountain beech forest survives a few kilometres from the Mediterranean, protected for fifteen centuries.

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Cut into the cliff, the grotto where tradition places Mary Magdalene's last thirty years, guarded by the Dominicans since 1295.

Beside the road to the Sainte-Baume, a stone oratory of 1516 marking the old pilgrims' way. A listed historic monument since 1938.

Built in 1623 for the White Penitents, it closes the Grand-Rue and starts the paths up to the Huveaune and the mountain.

The parish church holds a bronze bell cast in 1670 and listed as a historic monument. Its wrought-iron belfry overlooks the Grand-Rue.

On the Sainte-Croix hill, Iron Age ramparts mark a fortified settlement lived in for two centuries, around 200 BC.

From Saint-Maximin to the grotto of Mary Magdalene by way of Nans-les-Pins, the route kings, popes and pilgrims followed for centuries.

At the western end of the ridge, the pic de Bertagne reaches 1,042 metres, the highest point of the Bouches-du-Rhône, known by its radar station.