Île du Levant has belonged to naturists since the 1930s, and Crique des Moines remains one of the island's quieter sanctuaries—no beach clubs, no jet skis, just a crescent of smooth stones beneath Aleppo pines and the occasional sailboat rounding the headland. You'll descend a rocky footpath from the village of Héliopolis, the island's sole civilian hamlet, past eucalyptus groves and the kind of stillness that makes you forget the French navy owns the rest of this limestone sliver.
“One of the last Mediterranean coves where naturism remains the default, not the novelty, preserved on an island closed to cars and mass tourism.”
Credit: UnsplashWhite cliffs over a desert beach
The water here is that particular Provençal blue—deeper than turquoise, lighter than sapphire—and cold enough in May to make you gasp. By July it softens, inviting long swims toward the offshore rocks where wrasse dart through posidonia meadows. Most visitors spread towels on the pebbles, read paperbacks under umbrellas, and ease into the day without a swimsuit or a schedule. The cove's eastern flank offers decent snorkeling over boulders colonized by sponges and anemones; westward, the coast steepens into cliffs favored by cormorants.
Crique des Moines asks only that you carry out what you carry in and respect the unwritten codes of a place where bodily autonomy has been the norm for nearly a century. There's no café, no parking lot, no infrastructure beyond a narrow beach and the trails that connect it to the rest of this improbable, fiercely independent island.
