Fort Carre @ Starforts.com

Antibes sits on the balmy Mediterranean Sea just south of Nice: The region has been fought over ever since the suntan was discovered. The first fortifications at Antibes were probably built by the Romans, and then further structures were built there in medieval times, including a Greek chapel to the god Hermes, or Mercury. A tower called la tour Saint-Florent was later built in the same spot, incorporating the chapel.

Close to France's border with the bellicose (but nicely tanned) city-state Nice and thus in need of further fortification, French King Henry III (1551-1589) had four bastions added to the tower in 1565, creating Fort Carre, or the squared fort. Forces representing the House of Savoy, the rulers of most of Italy, attacked the fort in 1592. Though the results of this attack appear rather hazy, the Fort Carre is still there, so we can at least assume it wasn't completely destroyed.

Our man Vauban strengthened the fort in the 1680's, since that was his thang. Fort Carre remained a bastion of Frenchness on the border until Nice became part of France in 1860. Germans have never appreciated a good tan, so they left Antibes alone during the First (1914-1918) and Second (1939-1945) World Wars.

After WWII, the French military installed a huge sports stadium next to Fort Carre, making the post a training facility, at which training mostly took the form of playing soccer. In 1967 the army turned the entire facility over to the Department of Sports. The fort was restored by volunteers from 1979 and 1985, was acquired by the city of Antibes in 1997, and opened to the public in 1998.

Some of the James Bond movie Never Say Never Again (1983), featuring an aging yet still vaguely Bondian Sean Connery (1930- ), were shot at Fort Carre.