La Ciotat, France

The charming harbor of La Ciotat is on the Cote d’Azur midway between Marseille and Toulon. It is in some ways archetypical of the Riviera. If one thinks of Cannes and St. Tropez in relation to cinema, then La Ciotat predates their notoriety, for it was here that the Lumière Brothers, summer residents, filmed the arrival of a locomotive at the local station in 1895, which became the first commercially displayed cinema in history. They filmed several other pioneer films here, and also created the first color photographs in La Ciotat. Not to be outdone, Jules Le Noir invented the quintessential Rivera boules game pétanque here in 1910. Learn all about it in the local Musée Ciotaden.