Nice

Why go

A city, not a resort — three hundred and fifty thousand people who live here all year. Italian until 1860 — the old town is Genoese in plan and the food is Ligurian, not Provençal. Matisse and Chagall on the hill — two museums in Cimiez, both in the artists' own chosen settings. A base for the whole coast — Monaco twenty minutes, Antibes twenty-five, Italy thirty-five, all by train.

The character

Nice belonged to the House of Savoy until a referendum handed it to France in 1860, and almost everything distinctive about it dates from before that. Vieux Nice is a Genoese grid of tall ochre houses and narrow lanes; the dialect is Nissart, closer to Ligurian than French; and the food is its own — socca, a chickpea pancake cooked on copper in a wood oven, pissaladière, petits farcis, none of them Provençal.

The Promenade des Anglais explains the other half. An English clergyman raised money in 1820 to build a coastal path, largely to employ destitute workers, and the winter colony that followed turned the seafront into a line of white hotels and villas. The two cities have never merged: the old town is loud, Italian and working; the Belle Époque city behind the promenade is broad, formal and French. Nice is not a place that performs for visitors — it is the largest city on the Riviera, with a university, a port and traffic, and that ordinariness is precisely why it makes a better base than any of its glamorous neighbours.

Places of character

Cours Saleya market — flowers and produce Tuesday to Sunday, an antiques market on Monday. Musée Matisse, Cimiez — a red Genoese villa in an olive grove; Matisse lived in Nice for thirty-seven years and is buried up the hill. Musée Chagall — built to house the Biblical Message cycle, with Chagall's own stained glass and mosaic. Colline du Château — the hill where the citadel stood until 1706; a lift, a waterfall and the best view of the bay. Socca at Chez Pipo — a wood oven, one dish, and a queue of locals; the Ligurian half of the city on a plate. Le Port and Rue Bonaparte — where Niçois actually eat, ten minutes east of the old town and worth the walk.

The way to do it

Use the trains: the coastal line makes every town from Cannes to Ventimiglia a day trip for a few euros. Eat in the old town before eight or after nine, never in between. Walk up the Colline du Château on the first morning to fix the geography. And treat the promenade as a morning place — at seven it belongs to swimmers and runners, and the light on the water is why the painters came.

One perfect day

Swim off the pebbles at seven, then coffee and a slice of socca standing up. Cours Saleya while the flower market is being set up, then up the Colline du Château for the bay and the port from above. Bus to Cimiez for the Matisse museum in its olive grove and the Roman arena beside it. Long lunch in the old town — petits farcis, a carafe of Bellet, the local wine grown inside the city limits. Afternoon on the train to Villefranche for the deep-water bay, or to Antibes. Back for aperitif on the port, dinner at nine on Rue Bonaparte, and a last walk along the promenade when the hotels are lit and the sea is black.

Grand hotels

Le Negresco — 1913, with a Gustave Eiffel dome and a chandelier commissioned by a Russian tsar who never collected it. Hôtel Windsor — a nineteenth-century house where each room was given to a different contemporary artist.

When to go

Best expression: May and late September — sea warm enough, city working, terraces open. Consider: February for the Carnaval, which is genuinely a city event rather than a tourist one. Avoid if possible: August, when the promenade is solid and the old town is unbearable at midday.

The frame

Ideal stay 4 nights · Minimum 2 nights · Best arrival by air; the tram reaches the centre in twenty minutes · Airport NCE, 7 km · Walkability excellent and flat · Best without a car yes, the coastal railway does everything