...improvised streets, ruins and jazz...
A way from the beach, and east of the Promenade des Anglais , is the old centre of town - Vieux Nice. You can almost touch the Italian influence - the place buzzes, it's lively and animated. There are lots of small, inexpensive restaurants and pizzerias.
Many people's favourite attraction is the cours Saleya . It's a marketplace, bursting with colour, where you'll find an abundance of flowers, a Niçois green sprout salad speciality known as mesclun , and the best of the local fish catches. (Look out for Stockfish on your restaurant's carte in the evening - you probably saw it in the market earlier in the day.)
There's activity all around. Watch out for the delivery boys arriving with hot socca . It's a chickpea crêpe which has been deep fried in a batter - almost as satisfying as the old town itself.
As you wander down its narrow Italianate streets , the Baroque churches compete with the hanging washing and chic snooker parlours. This is no informal grid of streets as found a little further west. Vieux Nice is small and perfectly formed. Take some time to linger with the locals at the Chapon Fin on rue Moulin and you'll soon find out for yourself.
Though Vieux Nice has its own special history, the oldest part of France's fifth largest city is Cimiez. Nowadays, it's a sophisticated, mainly residential area sitting on a hill where, many moons ago, the Romans settled.
They arrived in the first century BC, and by the third century AD, Cimiez had 20,000 residents, and was the capital of a small eastern Gaul province called Alpes Maritimae . (The name of the département - County or State - nowadays is Alpes Maritimes.)
As with the local names, some of the Roman influence lives on. During the third century AD, they built thermal baths and arenas in Cimiez. Despite the wear and tear of the centuries, the amphitheatre still manages to contribute to Nice's big music event of the year - the Nice Jazz Festival.
Each July, in and around the amphitheatre, there are several stages in action simultaneously। One ticket buys you entry to concerts throughout the day - and, despite the number of big names who turn up each year, the atmosphere is relaxed and easy going. After all, a sultry July evening is not the time to be rushing around - especially when there's the next day's concert to look forward to.
- the Promenade des Anglais -
L ined with cafes and hotels, both modern and Belle Epoque, museums and posh apartments, the Promenade des Anglais is a long wide road which runs the length of the seafront at Nice . You walk across it and you're on the beach beside an unbelievably blue mediterranean .
The actual promenade itself, begins at the eastern end of Nice by the Jardin Albert I and runs westward towards the airport - a long way.
The older and grander hotels of the Promenade des Anglais were built at the turn of the century. In most people's eyes, the grandest, with its Empire and Napoléon decor, is the Negresco.
The building, which is now a national monument, was built in 1912 by Henri Négresco, a Hungarian immigrant. Before he started the hotel, Henri was director of the city casino's restaurant - we're talking guests who were the richest people in the world, the Rockefellers and the Singers. He wanted his hotel to be a hauts lieux as well, and had it designed to attract the very top of the upper crust.
As bad luck would have it, World War I reared its ugly head, and the hotel became a hospital. Négresco died shortly after the war, a ruined man.
Once the Americans arrived during the roaring twenties business soon picked up. Especially once Gerald and Sara Murphy and their entourage of writers and celebrities had discovered the pleasures of summer on the Riviera.
There are many more pleasures to be discovered on and around the Promenade des Anglais. On the Avenue des Baumettes, there is the Musé des Beaux-Arts Jules. And, in a little park on Rue de france just off the promenade, there is the Musée Masséna named after a local boy who was made a Napoleonic general.
Weary? Take a short walk back to the beach and enjoy the view across the bay to the Cap d'Antibes and the fortified Port Vauban which was built to defend Antibes, and France, from the Niçois.
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