Collioure, even more than St Tropez, is what your mind’s eye sees when it imagines a Mediterranean fishing village. Palm trees and small beaches. Blue sky, blue sea. The shining sun. Beachfront cafés. Restaurants in small streets. Steeply-terraced vineyards. Wine. Brightly-coloured fishing boats pulled up on the beach. Warm pastel colours.

Clichés? Perhaps… but clichés are clichés because they say things that everybody recognizes – or wants. Here, it’s a vision of how life ought to be. Sunny, warm, relaxed, friendly, healthy, unstressed. A place where the phone doesn’t ring, and the beach is nearby.

Beyond the cliché, Collioure has real substance. The 12th century Templar Château was built when the town was already old; Collioure was an important port for the Romans, and before them the Greeks and the Phoenicians. Hannibal and his elephants passed by two centuries before the birth of Christ.

About two millennia later, Matisse came to town and here freed himself from the more formal constraints of the 19th century and painted as he felt, in clear bright colours, so creating Fauvism. Others followed – Derain, Dufy, Gris, Picasso and Hanicotte to mention a few. The Hostellerie des Templiers welcomed them, accepting paintings in lieu of payment for meals, drinks and accommodation. So it became the centre of the art that was then, as now, at the centre of Collioure itself. There are still scores of artists’ ateliers - most open to the public, and many worth visiting.

In the intervening centuries the Colliourencs had been fishing and trading, making wine and living in the sun. They continue to do so today although now most of the fishing has moved to nearby deepwater Port Vendres, and the town attracts those in search of a colourful yet peaceful holiday – it is a place where the French themselves are keen to be - as attractive by night as by day.

There are three forts in Collioure: the Château itself, Fort Miradou, and Fort St Elme. The Château juts into the sea with a pavement promenade around the base of its massive walls, making for a fine short walk almost in the sea itself. Fort Miradou is a working military fort where commando instructors for the French army, air force and gendarmerie are trained. Fort St Elme sits five hundred feet above the eastern arm of the bay. Beautifully and sympathetically lit at night, it is visible from several miles away.

The small recently restored windmill on the slope a little down from Fort St Elme is a fully-functioning mill pressing oil from locally grown olives. Collioure’s emblematic church-cum-lighthouse stands on the western arm of the bay. Its round tower did duty as lighthouse as well as belfry for several centuries, and was injured many times during hostilities between the French and the Spanish, with we, the British, and the Dutch joining in from time to time. Inside the church are a number of magnificent baroque retables.

More recently Patrick O’Brian, author of the massively successful Aubrey/Maturin roman-fleuve lived and worked in Collioure. He was a solitary man, and Collioure’s increasing popularity disturbed him. Relatively late in his life, he and his wife drove the entire Iberian peninsula in an attempt to find a better place to live. After several months they returned, convinced that there was nowhere.