Saint-Tropez is preparing to bid farewell to the woman who helped transform its quiet fishing harbor into a symbol of sun-soaked glamour. Brigitte Bardot’s funeral will be held next week in the French Riviera town she called home for more than five decades, a farewell that reflects both her towering cultural legacy and the deep divisions she left behind.
Local authorities and Bardot’s foundation confirmed that the ceremony will take place on January 7 at the Notre-Dame de l’Assomption church in Saint-Tropez.
The service will be broadcast on large outdoor screens set up around the town, allowing residents and admirers to follow along, before Bardot is laid to rest in what officials described as a strictly private burial.
While the precise location has not been publicly confirmed, the seaside marine cemetery overlooking the Mediterranean, where members of the Bardot family are buried, has been widely cited as the likely site.
“Brigitte Bardot will forever be associated with Saint-Tropez, of which she was the most dazzling ambassador,” the town hall said in a statement. “Through her presence, personality, and aura, she marked the history of our town.”
Bardot died before dawn on Sunday at the age of 91 at her home in southern France. She passed away with her fourth husband, Bernard d’Ormale, by her side. “She whispered a word of love to him... and she was gone,” Bruno Jacquelin, a representative of her animal protection foundation, told BFM television.
Bardot’s rise to fame in the 1950s and 1960s reshaped French cinema and popular culture. Her breakthrough role in the 1956 film 'And God Created Woman' made her an international star in her early twenties. Over the next two decades, she appeared in around 50 films, becoming a defining face of a more liberated, modern France.
In 1973, at just 39, Bardot turned her back on acting entirely. She withdrew from the film industry and retreated to her villa, La Madrague, in Saint-Tropez, choosing a life largely out of the public eye. From there, she devoted herself almost exclusively to animal rights, a cause that would become the central mission of her later life.
Her commitment to animals, she often said, was inseparable from her fame. “I’m very proud of the first chapter of my life,” she told AFP in a 2024 interview ahead of her 90th birthday. “It gave me fame, and that fame allows me to protect animals – the only cause that truly matters to me.”
Bardot traced her awakening as an activist to a moment on the set of her final film, 'The Edifying and Joyous Story of Colinot,' when she encountered a goat destined to be slaughtered. She bought the animal to save it and kept it in her hotel room, a gesture she later described as life-changing.
From that point on, animal welfare became her singular focus. At the same time, her outspoken political views increasingly overshadowed her humanitarian work. Bardot became known for her anti-immigration rhetoric and her embrace of the far right, positions that led to five convictions for hate speech.
As Saint-Tropez prepares for a farewell, Bardot leaves behind an indelible image of cinematic freedom and enduring beauty, a fierce devotion to animals that shaped her final decades, and a trail of controversy.