This text is part of the special Pleasures notebook
Radiant in summer, Nice was mainly built thanks to winter in its recent history. This is even what earned it inclusion on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2021. A look at Nissa la Bella, the city with 300 days of annual sunshine.
When you stroll along the Passejada dóu Paioun (“Paillon promenade” in Nice dialect), nothing suggests the presence of a flowing river, under the slabs and the water jets where children frolic in hot weather .
When you arrive in Nice, it is equally improbable to imagine that more than 2000 years ago, Phocaeans founded a trading post there, Nikaïa, before the Romans settled there to found the colony of Cemenelum, of which you can still see the thermal baths and arenas in the Cimiez district.
In 2021, it is not so much this venerable past that has earned Nice its inclusion on the UNESCO World Heritage List, but rather its recent history. “As we see it today, this city was first built to welcome others,” says Jean-Pierre Barbero, director of the Masséna museum, dedicated to the history of the city.
We know the song: after the writings of the Scotsman Tobias Smollett, who praises the sweetness of life in Nice in the 18th centurye century, the British flocked and established themselves on the French Riviera. On the now famous Promenade des Anglais, the oldest foreign villa, that of Lady Penelope Rivers (at no 61), thus dates from 1787.
This is only the beginning: in the 1820s, around a hundred British families had a pied-à-terre in Nice and, later, even Queen Victoria came to recharge her batteries there between two trips to the Auer confectionery , near the splendid opera house. “We then develop the city accordingly: Nice families earn more from these wealthy foreigners in one winter than in a year of harvests,” says Isabelle Billey-Quéré, of the Nice Tourist Office.
“To encourage foreigners to extend their stay, we green the city, we open casinos and we create events like flower fights and carnivals,” recalls Jean-Pierre Barbero. Places of worship were also allowed to rise, such as the Anglican church in 1820, or the largest Russian cathedral outside Russia, in 1912.
Soon connected to the European rail network, Nice attracts more foreigners and becomes ever more cosmopolitan – something Romain Gary noted upon his arrival in 1927, as he underlines in The promise of dawn.
From the mid-18th centurye halfway through the 20th centurye century, vacationers erected august residences, sumptuous villas and pleasure buildings: 400 of them are still visible today. Fashionable styles (Belle Époque, Art Deco, eclecticism, etc.) rub shoulders, architectural follies mushroom, prestigious hotels (Westminster, Royal, Negresco, etc.) compete for the waterfront. Today, Nice forms a unique example of urban landscape shaped by its vocation as an international vacation spot.
World heritage… and local
Beyond the 522 hectare perimeter classified by UNESCO, there is also much to do and see in Nice. We quickly realize this from the top of the belvedere on Château hill, seeing the fabric of the city which extends between 8 km of pebble beaches and the Pre-Alps which tumble down nearby.
Just below, Old Nice forms an Italianate quadrilateral with ocher brown, Ligurian red or lemon yellow facades. Its narrow streets and high walls dampen the heat of the solar oven, leading to lively squares where people chat on the terrace, between two sips of Bellet wine, grown on the heights of Nice for two millennia.
After passing the line of good restaurants and food shops on Rue Pairolière, we soon arrive at the markets of Cours Saleya: carnations, roses and mimosas exhale and sting the nostrils before the fruits and vegetables stimulate the pupils. At the end of the course, the gracious Caïs de Pierlas palace housed Matisse’s studio from 1921 to 1928.
However, it is on the hill of Cimiez that you must go to better understand the soul of the master of Fauvism. In the beautiful Genoese residence transformed into the Matisse museum, which celebrates its 60th anniversary this year, we move from his first works from 1890 to the flat areas and cut-out gouaches of his last days.
In a nearby radius, the Chagall museum remains just as essential, especially in this year when it is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary. Inaugurated by the artist himself, it displays a rich collection, including his famous stained glass windows The creation of the world, which adorn the auditorium.
North of the train station, the district around the Libération market has become half-popular, half-bohemian, and is in the process of changing. This was also the case for the entire city of Nice, over the last twenty years, which has had its facades renovated and which inherited a tramway which has revitalized and beautified several districts and emblematic sites, such as the luminous Place Massena.
Still a mecca for the art of living, Nice continues to attract foreigners, who come to recharge their batteries, settle down there or telework. Everyone undoubtedly hopes to find refuge there and enjoy the happy mixture between this “freedom of the air, this fire of the sun and this mixing of the sea”, which one of the children of the city, the Nobel-winning writer Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio…
The author was the guest of the Nice Tourist Office.
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