The Riviera: history and heritage

About The Riviera: history and heritage

By the ULTIMATE French Riviera Editorial Team

Editor-in-Chief: Jai Michael

The Riviera was a land of olive groves, perched villages and fishing ports for most of its history. Greeks founded its first towns, Rome its first resorts, and Nice belonged not to France but to the House of Savoy until 1860. What made it famous was winter: from the eighteenth century, the British came for the mild sun, and the painters came after them for the light.

At a glance

Population: about 350,000 in Nice and about 1.1 million in the Alpes-Maritimes department (INSEE).

Names through history: Nikaia (Greek), Cemenelum (Roman Cimiez), Antipolis (Antibes), Nizza (Italian), Nice; the Niçois language, Nissart, is a form of Occitan.

For most of its history Nice was not French at all, and the Riviera’s first season was winter.

Shaped by: Greek Massalia, Rome, the Counts of Provence, the House of Savoy (Nice, 1388–1860) and France.

UNESCO World Heritage: Nice, Winter Resort Town of the Riviera (2021).

Greeks and Romans

Greeks from Massalia, today’s Marseille, founded trading posts at Nikaia (Nice) and Antipolis (Antibes) around the fourth century BC. The Romans built Cemenelum on the hill of Cimiez, where an amphitheatre and baths survive beside the Matisse Museum, and the great Trophy of Augustus at La Turbie, raised in 6 BC to mark the conquest of the Alpine tribes.

Perched villages

In the Middle Ages, against raiders from the sea, people moved up the hills into fortified villages: Èze, Saint-Paul-de-Vence, Gourdon and Peillon still stand on their rocks. The monks of the Îles de Lérins, off Cannes, have lived there since the fifth century.

Nice and Savoy

In 1388 Nice chose the protection of the House of Savoy, and for almost five centuries it looked to Turin rather than Paris. The colourful old town, Vieux Nice, with its Baroque churches and the Cours Saleya market, was built in those years. In 1860 Nice was ceded to France, while Monaco kept its independence.

The British winter

In the 1760s the Scottish writer Tobias Smollett praised Nice’s winter climate, and British families followed. Their community paid for a coastal path in the 1820s that became the Promenade des Anglais. The railway arrived in the 1860s, Queen Victoria wintered in Cimiez in the 1890s, and Cannes grew from a fishing village into a resort after a British lord settled there in 1834. The Train Bleu brought travellers from Calais and Paris from 1922.

The painters’ coast

Renoir spent his last years at Cagnes-sur-Mer; Matisse lived in Nice for almost forty years and designed the Chapel of the Rosary in Vence; Picasso worked in Antibes and Vallauris; Chagall’s Biblical Message museum stands in Cimiez; and Cocteau decorated the chapel in Villefranche. The Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul-de-Vence carries the tradition into modern art.

Cannes and the cinema

The Cannes Film Festival held its first full edition in 1946, and the Palais des Festivals hosts it each May.

Our advice: walk the Promenade des Anglais at dawn, climb the Colline du Château for the view over the Baie des Anges, then spend an afternoon at the Matisse and Chagall museums on Cimiez hill.

Sources

Population: INSEE, legal populations (Nice; Alpes-Maritimes). History: Ville de Nice; UNESCO World Heritage Centre (Nice, Winter Resort Town of the Riviera); Musée Matisse Nice; Centre des monuments nationaux (Trophée d’Auguste); Festival de Cannes.

Opening hours, prices and seasonal openings change, so please check with The Riviera: history and heritage before you go.