In the 16th century the seigneur established a fishing village here, clustered around the medieval watchtower, under the protection of "Sanct Nazari" of Lérins Abbey.

Sanary-sur-Mer is one of the sunniest places in France, with an average of only 61 days of rain, mostly in winter, as well as major solar radiation (6,156 MJ/m2/yr), comparable to Sicily.

It is regularly swept by the Mistral, a strong wind coming from the Rhône Valley, which brings low humidity around 20%, gusts up to 130 km/h (81 mph), cool temperatures, sun and deep blue skies.

With the rise of Nazism in the early 1930s, a great number of German writers and intellectuals left Germany and settled here: the playwright Bertold Brecht, Egon Erwin Kisch, Thomas Mann, Ludwig Marcuse, Joseph Roth, Franz Werfel and his wife Alma Mahler widow of Gustav Mahler at Le Moulin Gris (near the Chapelle Notre-Dame-de-Pitié), Lion Feuchtwanger at Villa Lazare then at Villa Valmer, and Arnold Zweig.

Ludwig Marcuse in his book "Mein Zwanzigstes Jahrhundert" (p. 160) wrote about Sanary: "Wir wohnten im Paradies – notgedrungen", meaning "We lived in paradise – against our will".

"If one lives in exile," wrote Hermann Kesten, "The café becomes at once the family home, the nation, church and parliament, a desert and a place of pilgrimage, cradle of illusions and their cemetery...