Hidden Gems: WHERE, outside of a museum or a private art collection, would you come across works by Picasso, Matisse, Raoul Dufy, Russian-born Leopold Survage, or Alphonse Mucha, the art-nouveau printmaker who designed sets and costumes for Sarah Bernhardt towards the end of the 19th century?
It seems unlikely that you'd find them on public view in a relatively unprepossessing little hotel in a French holiday village, where the Pyrenees mountain range meets the Mediterranean not far from the Spanish border. But that is where you'll find them. You could even have one all to yourself in your reasonably-priced bedroom.
Collioure, on La Côte Vermeille, has always been a summer retreat for artists. Surrealists Salvador Dali and Marcel Duchamp painted just down the coast in Port-Vendres, right on the border.
But it was to Hôtel Les Templiers on Quai de l'Amirauté in Collioure itself that most of those still making their names went on pilgrimage every year. This was mainly because the owners, René and Pauline Pous, were known not to push too hard for payment. Better still, they weren't averse to accepting the odd canvas in lieu.
If he liked your work, René apparently had a pretty free hand with the Banyuls, while Pauline cooked a mean bouillabaisse. They're said to have got on famously well with the young Picasso (pictured above).
The hotel has been modernised and an annexe added to give more rooms, but other than that it still looks much the same, with paintings packing every available surface, from the bar to the restaurant to the wandering staircase and the bedrooms. It's still run by the same family. It's a little down-at-heel. The bar is just a little seedy and does a healthy local lunch trade. And now and then, an unknown artist who knows about its history checks in with easel and paints www.hotel-templiers.com'