Royal Darse Harbor
The Royal Darse Harbor is located in the natural deepwater Mediterranean bay of Villefranche-sur-mer on the Côte d’Azur of southern France. Fortified by the Duke of Savoy in 1550 as a harbor for the first navy of Savoy, the site expanded into a royal port from 1713 when the possessions of the House of Savoy became the Kingdom of Sardinia.
The harbor facilities developed dynamically from 1730 to 1770 to include a lighthouse, dry dock, arsenal and forge, rope factory, officers’ barracks and prison. The dry dock for galley construction was the first of its kind in the Mediterranean. The Darse prison built in 1769 housed galley slaves and operated till 1850. From 1870 the building served as a hospital and quarantine station for cholera-infected prisoners from Nice.
The Darse has a complex naval history. From 1793 to 1814, the royal port became a naval base for Napoleon’s Mediterranean fleet. In the late 19th century, the Russian naval fleet used the port as a fuel depot where the Darse rope factory served to store coal reserves. The Russian fleet was ousted in the 1880s, but determined to maintain a presence, they converted the factory in 1885 into a zoological research station. In 1930 the French government took possession of the research station to transform it into the Oceanography Observatory of Villefranche-sur-Mer, one of three premier oceanographic research centers in France operated by the Pierre and Marie Curie University of Paris.
During World War II, the Nazis U-boat fleet occupied the harbor and stored their torpedoes under the arches of the old naval garrison. At the end of the war, they blew the arsenals and destroyed the arches. The American 6th Fleet occupied the port after the Allied victory and made Villefranche its base from 1945 to1965.
France classified the Royal Darse Harbor as historic monument in 1990 and the other main buildings in 1991. Visitors can attend a variety of programs at the port on the history of the Royal Darse and Villefranche. Today the Darse operates as a commercial marina and the Villefranche port is France’s most frequented port of call for cruise ships.
Researched and written by Virginia Vanneman, Graduate Student in the Department of History, University of West Florida.
