Nice

The Riviera has been visited by so many painters, writers and photographers over the years that the South of France has acquired the image of a shimmering promised land. This is where café terraces are shaded by plane trees and the warm air is filled with the scent of lavender; it’s where loveable village folk throw open their blue-painted shutters each morning and greet life with sunny dispositions and salt-of-the-earth wisdom. But there is so much more to this region than the spectacle of its villages perchés or its fields of sunflowers. The Riviera has long since ceased to be an aristocratic theme park of cocktails and casino chips. The South of the 21st century is a thoroughly modern place. The region’s sub-tropical climate sustains citrus fruits, fabulous gardens and Menton’s wintering pensioners.

Memories still linger of Picasso, Matisse and Renoir, and countless drab daubers, while the money that comes pouring into expat residences and film festivals sustains the haute-cuisine extravaganzas of Mougins. The eastern half of the département is still marked by its Italianate past (some places changed nationalities on numerous occasions), visible in the Genoese palazzos of Vieux Nice, frescoed trompe l’oeil facades of Villefranche-sur-Mer and the Baroque churches of Sospel and the upper valleys, as well as in culinary specialities such as gnocchi and ravioli.

Nice itself may not be as flashy as some of its more prestigious Côte D’Azur neighbours, and it doesn’t have the gritty cool of Marseille, but this sunny, sprawling city has plenty of charisma. The seaside promenade – with its sun-drenched palms and bronzed in-line skaters – is a year-round feast for the eyes, and there are lively bars, belle époque villas and first-rate museums devoted to Chagall and Matisse.

Nearby Monaco provides an autocratic, princely anomaly in the midst of fiercely Republican France, with all the requisite state trappings (and more) on a miniature scale.

Local history

During World War II, after Paris fell in June 1940, the Riviera became part of the zone libre or free France. Post-war reconstruction was responsible for some of the architectural horrors that dog the region; lax or corrupt planning departments did the rest, suffocating the Côte d’Azur in concrete in a misguided attempt to deal with mass tourism and the urban housing shortage of the major towns.

Local politics

Local councils have been quick to identify tourism as their biggest potential money-spinner, so the boom in holiday homes has attracted wealthy foreigners to the area, encouraging gentrification and further development.