Ile Sainte-Marguerite

The Île Sainte-Marguerite is the largest of the two Lérins Islands, lying opposite Cannes. It served in particular as a prison for the man in the Iron Mask. After the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, the fort on the Île Sainte-Marguerite became one of the four main places of imprisonment for Huguenots, alongside the Tour de Constance at Aigues-Mortes, the fort of Brescou and the Château d'If.

In the nineteenth century, the island was also a place of detention for political and colonial prisoners: it first held Kabyle prisoners deported after the Mokrani revolt of 1871 in Kabylia against French colonisation, then Kroumir insurgents, whose repression is linked to the official casus belli for France's conquest of Tunisia.

It is separated from the Cap de la Croisette, in the commune of Cannes, by a shallow strait about 1,300 m wide. The island extends west to east over a length of 3.2 km, and its maximum width reaches about 900 m. It is home to eucalyptus groves, among the oldest in Europe, as well as pines. Most of the island is covered by a protected forest owned by the State. Around twenty people live there permanently.