Henry II ordered construction of the fort in the 16th century at a time when Antibes was situated on a tense border with the Duchy of Savoy.

In the 16th century, Provence and the city of Antibes belonged to the Kingdom of France while the neighboring County of Nice depended on the Duchy of Savoy, with the border being formed by the Var river.

The south-east of Provence was at the time, therefore, a tense border zone that the kings of France sought to fortify from the reign of François I onwards.

Nevertheless, he established a list of projects to be carried out for the defense of Antibes, its port, and the Fort Carré (where he recommended, for example, restoring old window openings, improving water collection and quality, and building sentry boxes on the bastions[3]).

[4] He also created external defences: reinforcement of the angles of the bastions with granite; addition of traverses to protect against ricochet fire; and replacement of the tops of the stone parapets — which were liable to scatter deadly splinters when hit by shot — with brick ones.

Though the use of Fort Carré as a defensive installation spans more than three centuries, it was only attacked twice: During the French Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte was briefly imprisoned there.

In July 1794, after the violent overthrow of Robespierre, General Bonaparte was detained as a Jacobin sympathizer and held in Fort Carré for ten days.

[3] The 19th century marked a turning point with the annexation of Nice to France in 1860 and as advances in military technology rendered the Fort Carré obsolete.

Its last use in a military context dates to the Second World War: Fort Carré served, during the occupation, as a gathering center for foreigners for all the Alpes-Maritimes.