“Toulon Olé Olé” is a stunning guided tour of Toulon, exploring its sulphurous past as a purveyor of a wide variety of pleasures designed to give sailors from all over the world the satisfaction of an accomplished port of call!
This is how we 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 blood 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 Porte du Séminaire Royal des Jésuites on the Corderie, we'll revisit 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 meet Berthe de Toulon, half Régine, half Madame Claude, matchmaker and hostess of Toulon soirées between the wars.
In the same vein, we'll look at “les petites alliées” (from the title of writer Claude Farrère's novel), young women who don't necessarily wait for marriage before consummating its 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 furnish them with stories and anecdotes along our inevitably “en goguette” stroll.
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