Nice is an hour away by motorway. It is the only city on the Côte d'Azur that lives independently of tourism, with its Cours Saleya market, its Genoese old quarter, its Castle Hill above the Baie des Anges, and two museums, Matisse and Chagall, that would justify the day on their own.
Start here. Every morning except Monday the Cours Saleya holds the flower and produce market, beneath the ochre façades of the old quarter. On Mondays it becomes the city's great antiques market. You can buy cut flowers, hot socca, fougasse, Nice olives and tomatoes from the hinterland.
Beside it, the Place Rossetti and its baroque cathedral of Sainte-Réparate, and the maze of the old town: tall narrow lanes, washing at the windows, Ligurian façades in ochre and red. Nice was Savoyard and then Italian until 1860, and its old quarter belongs more to Genoa than to Provence. Here you eat socca, pissaladière, stuffed vegetables, and daube niçoise.
There is no castle any more, destroyed in 1706, but the hill remains, and it is the finest viewpoint in the city. You climb it by steps from the old town, by the free lift beside the Bellanda tower, or by wandering up through the gardens. At the top, an artificial waterfall, pines, a remarkable cemetery and the view down over the Baie des Anges, the red roofs of the old quarter on one side, the harbour on the other.
This is where to be an hour before sunset.
Two museums, two quarters, one reason to come to Nice.
The Musée Matisse, in a Genoese villa on the hill of Cimiez among olive trees, covers the whole career of the painter, who lived in Nice from 1917 until his death in 1954. You see the cut-paper works, the models for the chapel at Vence, the drawings. He is buried a few steps away, at the Cimiez monastery.
The Musée National Marc Chagall, lower down, was built in 1973 to hold a unique group of works: the seventeen large canvases of the Biblical Message, which Chagall gave to the State, in a building designed with him, with his stained glass and its reflecting pool. It is one of the finest museums in France, and one of the least crowded.
Cimiez also has the Roman remains of Cemenelum, baths and amphitheatre, freely accessible.
Seven kilometres of seafront, better by bicycle than on foot. The beach is shingle, which always comes as a surprise, and the blue chairs are part of the scenery. The old port to the east, with its tall façades and its restaurants, is more interesting than the promenade itself.
This guide is part of the address book of a private estate in Puget-sur-Argens, 60 minutes away, available for weddings and family stays. It is not open to visitors.
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