The Maures forest stretches from the village of Collobrières, known as the capital of chestnuts, to the seaside resort of Bormes-les-Mimosas in the Var department. Over 27,182 acres (11,000 ha), it forms a forest reserve unique in the Mediterranean. Dense and deep, it is rooted in blackish rockfills at the origin of the name of the massif it covers. In Provençal dialect, the term maure indeed means dark or wild and recalls its crystalline subsoil of metamorphic rocks that constitutes an exception in a region of white limestone or red rhyolite.