Saint-Raphaël, Var
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Saint-Raphaël is a commune of the Var département and the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region of France. Along with the city of Fréjus, it forms the metropolitan Communauté d'agglomération de Fréjus Saint-Raphaël, 60 kilometers southwest of the city of Nice on the Mediterranean coast. It is considered part of the French Riviera.
During World War II, on August 15, 1944, it was one of the sites of a beach landing in Operation Dragoon, the Allied invasion of southern France. The north of the commune forms part of the Estérel Massif. In the 1999 census, Saint-Raphaël had a population of 30,671.
The bacterium Streptomyces mediterranei was first isolated in 1957 from a soil sample collected near St Raphael. The bacteria became the source of the anti-tuberculosis drug rifamycin.
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