Degaby, an uninhabited, craggy limestone island, is 300 m off the coast of Endoume in southern France. Long known as Fort Tourville – after Admiral Tourville – it had been a defensive post of Marseille during the era of Louis XIV. In the mid-nineteenth century, the fort was enlarged. Shortly before World War I, André Laval, a wealthy industrialist from Marseille, bought the island as a gift to his wife Liane Degaby, a former dancer. She transformed it into a meeting place for the high society. For a time it was a luxury hotel, but there were also phases of decay. The fortress’s outer walls, 10 m above sea level, afford a view of the Frioul archipelago. On the northern corner of the island is a structure.