FREJUS, a town in the department of the Var in S.E. France. Pop. It is 18 m. S.E. of Draguignan. It has fine Roman remains. Since the 4th century it has been a bishop's see, in the ecclesiastical province of Aix en Provence. In modern times the neighbouring fishing village at St. Raphael (2 2 m. by rail S.E., and on the seashore) has become a town of 5,627 inhabitants (1926). In 1799 Napoleon disembarked there on his return from Egypt, and re-embarked for Elba in 1814, while nowadays it is much frequented as a health resort, as is also Valescure (2 m. N.W. on the heights above). The cathedral church in part dates from the 12th cent., and small portions of the mediaeval episcopal palace are now visible, as it was rebuilt about 1823. The ramparts of the old town can still be traced for a long distance, and there are fragments of two moles, of the theatre and of a gate. The am phitheatre, which seated 12,000 spectators, is better preserved. The ruins of the great aqueduct which brought the waters of the Siagnole, an affluent of the Siagne, to the town, can still be traced for a long distance. The town of Forum Iulii was founded by Julius Caesar on this site, formerly the capital of the Oxybii, to secure a harbour independent of Marseilles. The buildings, of which ruins exist, were mostly built by Caesar or by Augustus, and show that it was an important naval station and arsenal. But the town suffered much at the hands of the Arabs and Barbary pirates, and its inhabitants have used the ruined Roman buildings as a quarry. The old harbour (really a portion of the lagoons) is now completely silted up.
Corks, bricks, tiles and fine pottery are made, and rushes are woven. There are mines of coal and bituminous shale.