Nice is the least fashionable of the great Riviera addresses and, for a certain kind of stay, the most useful. It is a real city — five hundred thousand people, a working port, an opera house, markets that exist for residents rather than visitors — with the coast’s only serious airport on its edge. Guests who arrive expecting Cannes are surprised. Guests who understand what the city is rarely stay anywhere else.
The shape of the city
Nice runs east to west along the Baie des Anges. At the eastern end sits the Old Town, dense and Italianate, with the port immediately beyond it and Mont Boron rising above. In the middle is the nineteenth-century city — the Promenade des Anglais, the Carré d’Or, the belle-époque hotel facades. Behind and above lies Cimiez, the hill of Roman ruins, olive trees and the largest private gardens in the commune. West of the centre the city thins toward the airport and loses interest.
Almost everything worth knowing follows from that geography. The good addresses are on the hills; the good restaurants are in the Old Town and around the port; the beaches are pebble and public, and the swimming is better ten minutes away in either direction.
- Mont Boron — sea on three sides, pine woods, gated houses, ten minutes from the port. The obvious choice for a villa.
- Cimiez — belle-époque villas, deep gardens, complete quiet. Further from the water, closer to the city’s civility.
- Carré d’Or — apartments rather than houses, but the best of them are exceptional and put you on foot everywhere.
- The Corniches, toward Villefranche — technically leaving Nice, and the views justify it.
What to actually do
The Cours Saleya market in the morning, early, before it turns toward the tourist end of its trade — Tuesday through Sunday, flowers on one side, produce on the other. The Matisse museum in Cimiez, in the ochre villa above the Roman arena, and the Chagall a few minutes below it: two small, complete collections that reward an hour each rather than a morning.
Walk the Promenade at seven in the morning, when it belongs to the city. Climb to the Colline du Château for the view down the bay — there is a lift from the eastern end if the steps do not appeal. And take the coast road east, past Villefranche and the Cap, in the late afternoon, which remains one of the finest short drives in Europe.
For the wider cultural map of the coast — the Fondation Maeght, the Picasso museums, the Léger — our guide to art and culture on the Riviera sets out what is worth the drive.
Eating
Nice has a genuine cuisine of its own, which is unusual on this coast: socca, pissaladière, petits farcis, stockfish. It is best eaten simply and cheaply in the Old Town rather than reinterpreted. For the other register, the city and its immediate surroundings hold several starred kitchens, and the Michelin map of the wider coast is set out in our selection of starred restaurants.
Two practical notes. Reservations in July and August need making a fortnight ahead for anything of consequence, and rather longer for the seafront tables in Villefranche. And the port has quietly become the more interesting dinner district over the last decade, while the Promenade has not.
We arrange stays across Nice and the Corniches, from Mont Boron to Cimiez.
Nice as a base
This is the city’s real argument. From a house on Mont Boron you are seven minutes from the airport by helicopter and fifteen by car, twenty-five minutes from Monaco, thirty-five from Cannes, forty from Antibes and under an hour from the Italian border at Ventimiglia. Nothing else on the coast combines that reach with a city that functions all year.
It also means arrivals are simple. Nice Côte d’Azur is the principal private aviation gateway of the Riviera, and transfers onward — by car, helicopter or tender to a yacht in Villefranche — are a matter of minutes rather than logistics. Our guide to private aviation on the coast covers how that works in practice.
When to come
May and June for the light and the empty mornings. September for the warmest sea of the year and a city that has exhaled. October is often glorious and almost always underestimated. February brings Carnival, which is genuinely spectacular and fills the centre for a fortnight — plan around it deliberately, in one direction or the other.
August is hot, full and, in the city rather than on the hills, occasionally airless. If August is your month, take the altitude: Cimiez and Mont Boron are several degrees cooler and the difference is felt at three in the afternoon.
A last word
Nice does not perform for visitors the way Saint-Tropez or Cannes do, and that is precisely its value. It is a city you can live in for a fortnight rather than visit — which, if you are travelling with family, staying in a house rather than a hotel, and using the coast rather than a single address, is usually the better proposition. We would be glad to compose the stay around it.