Travel: Tales Of The Naked City

Everything is different when you are completely nude, though it helps when everyone around you--in line at the post office or dancing at a disco, for example--is naked too. Inside the walls of the "naturist quarter" at Le Cap d'Agde, a sprawling French resort on the Mediterranean Sea that is reputedly the largest assemblage of naked souls in this world, the undressed population soars to 40,000 during July and August.

A veteran skinny-dipper, I had spent time at smaller nudist resorts in the past and was thus prepared for most of my social encounters in the bare-skinned section of Le Cap d'Agde, separated from "the textile world" by a guarded gate where visitors pay a nominal entrance fee. One of the slogans for the Naked City, I was told, is SEE AND BE SEEN! I had also heard about "boutiques where you can use the changing room--or try it on where you stand!"

There are dozens of naturist (Europeans prefer this word to nudist to stress its back-to-nature aspect) beaches and resorts on the Mediterranean. Naturism began here in the 1950s at a simple campground that attracted Northern Europeans who wanted to strip in the sun. It took off, however, in 1970, following the French government's decision to promote naturist resorts as a means of diversifying the economy in the face of a decline in the local fishing and winemaking industries.

Nowadays, Le Cap d'Agde is the nudist community in Southern France, with something for everyone. There are families with young children, large numbers of bronzed retirees, lots of elderly folk (with no handicap access to the beaches, one naked octogenarian regularly makes the rounds with his walker) and representatives of every age group in between. Everyone has a different reason for coming here. "There is more finesse, a bit more je ne sais quoi, to French naturism," a well-tanned Austrian in his 60s tells me as he prepares for another day on the sandy "nudism obligatory" beach, where cameras are taboo and coconut-scented suntan oil seems to be the millennium rage.

"There's nothing like this in the world," enthuses Claudine Tartanella, who with her husband runs a Florida-based travel company www.cap-d-agde.com) "Americans like the complete freedom and the fact that everything is open 24 hours a day." Commercial convenience might sound like an odd attribute for such a place. In fact, clothing boutiques abound. I easily adapted to shopping au naturel: I bought some T shirts for my kids. I also dropped in on some of the 50 bars and restaurants, where, I learned, it is polite to put a towel on your chair at lunch. I also checked out bakeries, one of which sells bread in the shape of various anatomical parts; a beauty salon called Adam and Eve; and the Ladybel massage parlor, where a sign reads WE SPEAK F-GB-D-NL-I-SP (that's French, English, German, Dutch, Italian and Spanish).

Today's international clientele includes 10,000 campers living in tents and trailers at a tree-lined campground where no one seems to mind the curtainless showers. There are also 30,000 other residents in villas and multistory apartment complexes. "This is now the world's largest naturist center and is a key aspect of our economy," explains Christian Bezes, a naturist working at the local tourism office www.capdagde.com) "Nudity brings everyone to the same social level."