The Insider’s Guide to Saint-Tropez, Beyond the Yacht Parade

Few people know that ritzy Saint-Tropez is actually named for a decapitated Roman: Torpes, an officer under Nero, lost his head in Pisa around A.D. 68 and was set adrift in a boat with a rooster and a dog, which washed up here. The town that took his name stayed a sleepy fishing port for the better part of two millennia, until the painters found the light in the 1890s, Brigitte Bardot found a film set in 1956, and everyone else found Bardot.

After that, the town on the French Riviera never stopped growing: the starlets drew the photographers, who drew the money, which kept arriving in ever-bigger boats. Fewer than 5,000 people live here year-round, though by August that figure looks like a misprint, and the harbor that once reeked of fish now berths yachts worth more than the GDPs of small countries. The coast around it has become one long luxury playground, where day-trippers pour off the buses for a selfie and a gelato while the truly committed arrive by helicopter. People have been calling the town finished and even flat-out vulgar every September for decades, then turning up again every June to fight for a lunch table, which is partly why the locals gave up fretting about it long ago.

2026 is worth a fresh look, though not for the reason you’d expect. The coastal rewrite happened years ago: under France’s Loi Littoral (coastal law), the Pampelonne beach clubs were pulled back from the waterline and rebuilt behind the dune line in lightweight, demountable form, the roster trimmed along the way. Club 55 held its ground while the rest moved, and the de Colmont family still—at least thus far—politely turns the fashion house collaborations away. What’s new this year sits up the hill and across the water, in the hotels—addresses gone dark for years, reopened over the winter, rebuilt or in new hands. First-timers get the postcard and the real town behind it. The glamour survived, and this season, it even grew up a little.