Travel in France - off peak Riviera
With its year-round mild climate and unique light, the Riviera has been attracting visitors for centuries; people have always come here to convalesce, capture the coast on canvas or simply to sample the finer things in life. In summer the beaches and towns are packed and traffic jams along the coastal roads test the patience of locals and tourists alike. Out of season, though, the resorts are more relaxed and the roads and restaurants quieter, so with this in mind we set off to sample the southeast corner of the Riviera in Alpes-Maritimes at a more relaxed pace.
Touching down at Nice airport on a bright October afternoon, it was a short drive along the coast into the city, which occupies the land between the Bellet hills high above the city and the Baie des Anges. We followed the Promenade des Anglais, as it gently curved round the bay bringing us into town. Built by fashionable English folk who wintered here in the nineteenth century, this boulevard is now a haven for joggers, rollerbladers and pedestrians as well as those who just want to pause and watch the sea.
The hues of the sky as well as the sea change constantly here, depending on the time of year as well as the weather conditions, so even the locals never tire of the views. On the day of our arrival a stiff breeze had whipped the water up into a curious opaque turquoise, which stretched as far as the horizon and maybe even to distant Corsica.
The city itself has plenty of colour of its own, from the porters who stand outside the luxurious Belle Époque Hôtel Negresco, with their red breeches and feathered hats, to the ochres, yellows and blues of the tall, shuttered buildings in the old quarter. The old town, with its crooked, shady streets and less-than-pristine houses is a far cry from the open boulevards and nineteenth-century splendour of the seafront, yet it lures visitors into its narrow streets to lose themselves in the maze of ruelles, stumbling upon tiny traditional restaurants serving local specialities such as socca and pissaladière.
On Rue St-François-de-Paule you’ll find Alzieri – a niçois institution famed for its high-quality olive oil. This family business, established in 1868, still uses traditional methods to extract oil from olives picked from the cailletier trees, which grow at the family’s grove high up in the Bellet hills above the city.
To sample the flavours of Nice for ourselves we headed to L'Estocaficada, a traditional niçois restaurant nestled in a shady backstreet of the old town. We were taking a cookery lesson with chef and proprietor Brigitte Autier, whose grandmother started this restaurant fifty years ago. The classes are held when the restaurant is closed and when Brigitte has the time to share her love of cooking; explaining why it’s so important to do things properly and with care. We started off by learning how to choose the correct knife for the task in hand, how to sharpen it and hold it, then throughout the morning we slowly progressed to gutting and scaling fish and the art of slicing an orange wafer thin to create a carpaccio, more difficult than it sounds. The lessons allow you not only to master some new skills – I discovered a talent for ripping out the insides of a fish in one swift move – but also the opportunity to meet a true niçois character in Brigitte, whose love of food and her home city is evident.
Radiant light
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, painters began to flock to the Riviera, captivated by the radiant light that bathes this coastal corner of France. Impressionists such as Monet and Renoir sought to capture the ever-changing light and its effect on the landscape, while Fauvists such as Matisse expressed themselves through strong colours including the brilliant blues of the Mediterranean.
To help you learn more about the artists who came here, the tourist board has devised a trail entitled ‘The Painters of the Côte d’Azur’. Covering nine communes, the route lets you discover the Riviera via a series of panels, so you can see the landscape through the eyes of the artists who were so inspired by this luminescent land. Each one depicts a work of art placed at the very site where the artist set down his easel and began to paint.
At the seaside village of Villefranche-sur-Mer, just to the east of Nice, we stood on the Quai Amiral Courbet and admired Les filets de Villefranche by Raymond Tournon. It was wonderful to note, when comparing the painting to the modern-day scene, how little had changed since Tournon painted the work in 1918. The tall and tatty quayside houses of the painting were still crying out for a lick of paint and to our right fishermen’s ropes, piled up high, were still drying in the afternoon sun.
This pretty fishing village rises up sharply from the port in a series of vaulted and stepped streets lined with houses of yellow, ochre and pink, some with trompe l’oeils painted on their walls. The Église St-Michel in the old town is deliciously pink and yellow like a Battenburg cake, and worth visiting to experience the Italian Baroque style meanwhile, down by the port, the Chappelle St-Pierre holds its secret on the inside.
This deconsecrated fisherman’s chapel was beloved of surrealist Jean Cocteau who visited Villefranche for extended periods during the 1920s and 1930s. His favourite hotel room overlooked the chapel and in 1957 he asked if he could decorate the interior. His bold depictions of gypsies, women and scenes from St Peter’s life on the cool white interior of this tiny chapel are unexpected, awe-inspiring and almost claustrophobic – a work of art not to be missed.
The citadel was built by the Duke of Savoy in 1560 and houses the Musée Volti with its series of sculptures, mostly of the human form, by Villefranche resident Antoniucci Volti. Unlike most museums, this one positively encourages its visitors to touch the works of art – it frequently welcomes groups of blind people – so it’s a good place to bring the kids.
Sparkling sea
Leaving Villefranche we continued east and took the coastal road around the luscious and luxurious Cap-Ferrat peninsula, venturing inland once in a while to drive through winding streets of properties tucked behind high gates and wondering who might live in such houses that managed to be discreet yet shout prosperity at the same time.
There are three routes you can take to experience the beauty of this part of the coastline: the Grande Corniche, which rises into the mountains as high as 450 metres, allows you to experience thrilling views as well as unnerving hairpin bends; the Moyenne Corniche is less winding but still offers great views over the Riviera resorts; while the Basse Corniche carries you into the resorts themselves, always flanked by the sparkling sea.
The perched village of Èze sits on the Moyenne Corniche, and clings to a cliff, threatening to tumble into the sea at any moment. We followed a winding route from the seaside commune of Èze-Bord-de-Mer on the Basse Corniche, passing more luxury houses tucked behind high gates on the way up to Èze itself. Parking by the tourist office, we entered the walled medieval village along with scores of tourists and were plunged into a series of cobbled alleys and paths, some in shade, others bathed in full sunlight.
Although the streets are steep, they are paved with terracotta tiles making the route easy to navigate, and many of the paths are adorned with mosaics known as calades made from galets, or river stones. The pretty limestone houses have large ground-floor openings that once housed animals but many have been converted into shops selling sculptures carved from the wood of olive trees and other locally inspired crafts.
At the very top of the village, 429 metres above the sea in the former garden of a fourteenth-century château is the Jardin Exotique. This unexpected but delightful attraction is home to a weird and wonderful collection of cacti from all over the world. The views along the coast from this beautiful and well-preserved village are spectacular. It’s not hard to see why so many people have come and stayed a while here, from Frederick Nietze, who loved to ramble up from the Basse Corniche through pine woods and olive groves, to rock star Bono, who owns a home on the hillside.
After a leisurely lunch on the terrace of restaurant Nid d’Aigle, we ventured eastwards along the Moyenne Corniche with the mountains above us and Monte Carlo (where the wealth is far from behind closed doors) below. If you’ve a head for heights, join the Grande Corniche to visit the beautiful medieval village of Roquebrune, another perched paragon with stepped streets and a medieval keep. These now-peaceful perched villages once protected the locals from pirates and other bands of marauders who once prowled the coastline.
Dazzling views
Our final stop, and the last coastal town before the Italian border, was Menton. It is famed for the lemon festival that takes place each February, when spectacular floats decorated in citrus fruits parade through the streets. With its marina of supersized yachts, dazzling sea views and palm-lined roads, it has the characteristics of Nice and the other Riviera resorts but with a less flashy feel. Sheltered by high hills, Menton enjoys a balmy sub-tropical microclimate that has long attracted gardeners as well as those escaping cold winters.
In the nineteenth century many of those who could afford to winter here built large villas with ambitious gardens containing plants and flowers from around the globe. We drove up to a viewing point on the Boulevard de Garavan, which overlooks many of the town’s most elegant houses as well as the old town. Below us were grand Belle Époque villas, fertile gardens of lemon trees and palms and the Roman-tiled roofs and narrow streets of the old town. Beyond that the deep blue sea looked extremely inviting, even on a crisp October day.
To see the villas and gardens up close we visited the Villa Maria-Serena where the planting creates a new map of the world, with Mexico sitting between Japan and Australia and southern and northern hemisphere plants happily sitting side by side. Charmingly, many of the southern hemisphere plants in this garden have kept their genetic memories, flowering during winter like old colonials in a foreign outpost doggedly clinging on to traditions from home.
The garden is only open on Tuesdays and is an excellent example of the botonical treasures bestowed on the town by past residents. The Jardin Serre de la Madone is another global garden, which took Lawrence Johnson, designer of the garden of Hidcote Manor in the Cotswolds, 30 years to create using plants from around the planet.
With a stunning apricot villa as a backdrop, old-fashioned greenhouses, Moorish-inspired pools and a Persian pavillon, a visit here is a pleasure for gardeners or those who simply want to lose themselves in a peaceful and beautiful place. The best time to visit the gardens of Menton is in June, when everything is in full colour, except I presume, those stubborn old boys in the Jardin Maria-Serena which insist on flowering at the wrong time of year.
Through its gentle climate, amazing light, good food or even its fertile earth, the Riviera nurtures its residents and visitors, be they people or plants. It’s not surprising that people are inspired by and drawn back to this perennially popular part of France, where everywhere you go, it seems you can see the light dancing off the waves.