Between Nice and the Monaco border lie fifteen kilometres that most visitors drive through on the way to somewhere louder. They contain the deepest harbour on the coast, a medieval village on a rock four hundred metres above the sea, and the three Corniche roads — which is to say, the most beautiful stretch of the French Riviera and the least contested.
Villefranche-sur-Mer
A fishing town that has resisted almost everything. Ochre houses stacked around a bay so deep that the seabed drops to nearly a hundred metres within sight of the beach, a sixteenth-century citadel, and the Rue Obscure — a covered medieval street running under the houses, unchanged since the thirteenth century.
The depth explains the town’s whole character. It is why cruise ships anchor here, why the American fleet used it for decades, and why yachts choose it for the night: it is the flattest water on the coast. If you are chartering, a night at anchor in the rade of Villefranche is the calmest sleep of the week.
Ashore, the Chapelle Saint-Pierre on the quay was decorated by Cocteau in 1957 and takes ten minutes to see. The restaurants along the Quai Courbet are unremarkable and beautifully positioned; the good eating is in the streets behind.
- Basse Corniche — at sea level, through the villages. Slow in summer, lovely out of season.
- Moyenne Corniche — the practical one, and the road that delivers Eze.
- Grande Corniche — five hundred metres up, along the Roman road. The view, and the drive worth doing once at sunset.
Eze
The village is a defensive site rather than a settlement: a knot of stone lanes wound around a rock, with a ruined castle at the top and the exotic garden planted in its remains. From the summit the view runs from the Estérel to the Italian border, and on a clear day to Corsica.
It receives a great many visitors, and the entire experience depends on when you arrive. Between eleven and four in summer it is a queue. Before nine in the morning, or after six in the evening when the coaches have gone, it is a medieval village with almost nobody in it, and it is one of the finest things on this coast.
Below, the Chemin de Nietzsche descends the cliff to Eze-sur-Mer in about forty-five minutes — steep, unshaded, and the path the philosopher walked while composing part of Zarathustra. Go down, not up, and arrange to be collected at the bottom.
Houses on the Corniches are few, and rarely advertised.
Where the houses are
This stretch holds some of the most dramatically sited properties on the Riviera and not many of them. The best sit on the Moyenne and Grande Corniches above Eze and Villefranche, with the whole bay beneath them and, on the eastern side, Cap Ferrat in the foreground. They are hillside houses by definition — terraced gardens, steps, and no direct sea access — which is the trade-off set out in our note on waterfront versus hillside.
What you buy with the altitude is privacy and view. What you give up is walking to the water. For couples and for families with older children, it is frequently the right exchange; with a three-year-old and a pram it is not.
Who this stretch suits
Guests who want the coast without the scene. There is no nightlife here to speak of, no beach club culture, and nothing that resembles Saint-Tropez in August. There is a quiet bay, exceptional light, two of the best drives in Europe, and Monaco fifteen minutes away for the evenings when you want the other register.
It also works unusually well as a base. Nice airport is twenty-five minutes, Monaco fifteen, Antibes forty. Guests who intend to use the whole coast rather than one town frequently end up here, as our guide to Nice also argues for the city itself.
Practicalities
The Basse Corniche in July and August is genuinely slow, and the fifteen minutes to Monaco can become forty-five. Use the Moyenne. Parking in Eze village is limited and a driver is worth having for the evening visit. And the walk down to Villefranche’s beach from most hillside properties is easy in one direction only — plan the return.
Come in May, June, September or October. This stretch is at its best when the light is low and the roads are empty, which is most of the year. We would be glad to compose a stay around it.