The Missiri Mosque is one of the most unexpected sights on the entire Côte d'Azur: a Sudano-Sahelian style building with tapering mud-style towers and terracotta colouring, set incongruously among the pine trees and villas of a quiet residential quarter north of Fréjus town centre. Nothing in the surrounding landscape prepares you for it.
Built in the early 1930s for Senegalese colonial troops, it is modelled on the Great Mosque of Djenné — though substantially smaller and constructed in concrete rather than the original's earthen construction. The building speaks to a largely forgotten chapter of French colonial history: West African soldiers who fought in France's wars from the First World War onwards, and the military camps in the south of France where they were stationed. The exterior is the main draw; entry is not always possible, but the structure is striking from every angle, and the short detour from the town centre is well worth making.