Tobi 87, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Nice
The city the Riviera is run from — a bay, a pebble beach and a promenade built by wintering English aristocrats, behind them an old town that was Italian until 1860 and still cooks like it.
Nice
Nice is the practical capital of the Riviera rather than its prettiest corner, and that is exactly why it works as a base. It is a real city with an airport on its own seafront, a railway that runs along the coast in both directions, hospitals and markets and a university — and behind the seafront an old town of tall ochre houses and narrow lanes that looks and eats far more Italian than French. It was Italian, or something close to it, until 1860. Visitors who come expecting a small resort are surprised by the scale; visitors who come expecting sand are surprised by the stones.
Explore Nice on the map
City locations, drawn from our published destination data. Attractions, hotels and restaurants are not mapped yet.
What Nice is for
A bay to walk, an old town to eat in, a hill to climb for the view, and two painters who stayed.
The seafront and the hill
- Walk the Promenade des Anglais end to end at least once, ideally early. It runs from the airport at the western end to the Quai des États-Unis below the old town, and the blue chairs along it are a civic institution rather than street furniture.
- Climb or ride up the Colline du Château for the view over the roofs of Vieux Nice and the whole sweep of the Baie des Anges. There is a waterfall, a cemetery and a good deal of shade at the top, and it is the single best half hour in the city.
- The beach is pebble, in places large pebble, and it shelves steeply into deep clear water. Swimming is excellent; lying down is not, unless you have brought a mat. This is worth knowing before arrival rather than after.
Vieux Nice
- The Cours Saleya market runs most mornings — flowers, produce, olives, socca cut off a copper pan — and turns into a line of restaurant tables in the evening. It is touristed and still worth it, particularly before nine.
- The lanes behind it hold baroque churches out of all proportion to the street width, including the Cathédrale Sainte-Réparate, and the Palais Lascaris, a seventeenth-century townhouse with a collection of historic instruments.
- Eat what the old town actually cooks. Socca is a chickpea-flour pancake baked in a wood oven and eaten standing up; pissaladière is an onion and anchovy tart descended from Ligurian pissalandrea; farcis niçois are stuffed vegetables; and a real salade niçoise contains no cooked vegetables at all, which locals will tell you at length.
Museums and the hill above
- The Musée Matisse is up in Cimiez, in a red villa among Roman ruins and olive trees. Matisse lived in Nice for decades and the collection follows him from the early canvases to the late cut-outs.
- The Musée National Marc Chagall, closer to the centre, was built around his Biblical Message cycle and designed with him. The two together make a strong half day and both are a short bus ride from the seafront.
- Cimiez also holds the Roman town — an amphitheatre and baths from when this was Cemenelum, the Roman settlement on the hill above the Greek harbour town below. It is free to walk and almost always empty.
Three nights in Nice
The city itself
Start on the Promenade des Anglais early, then turn into Vieux Nice for the Cours Saleya market and socca from a pan. Up the Colline du Château in the late afternoon for the view down the bay, and back into the old town for dinner, which is where the city is at its best.
East along the corniche
The classic day out: the train or bus east to the perched village of Èze above the water, then on to Monaco — a separate country, in Schengen and on the euro — for the old town, the palace and the harbour. Villefranche-sur-Mer on the way back is a short stop and a very pretty one.
West to Antibes and Cannes, or the museums
West by train instead: Antibes for the ramparts, the market and the Picasso museum in the Château Grimaldi, and Cannes for the Croisette and the old quarter above it. If the coast has done its work, spend the day on the hill at Cimiez with Matisse, Chagall and the Roman town instead.
Out of the city
West and inland for Provence — the Luberon villages, Avignon and lavender country, all on the region page — or east across the frontier into Italy, which is closer than most itineraries realise. Paris is a direct TGV back up the country.
Arriving & getting around
An airport on the seafront, a coastal railway that does the work, and no reason at all to drive.
Getting here
- Nice Côte d’Azur (NCE) sits on the Promenade des Anglais at the western end of the city — unusually close for an international airport — with a tramway running from the terminals into the centre and on towards the old town.
- The TGV comes down from Paris along the coast, and both of the packages that bring travellers here use it. Nice-Ville is the main station and is a walk or two tram stops from the seafront.
- Indian passport holders need a Schengen visa. France is in the European Union, the Schengen area and the eurozone — all three. Neighbouring Monaco is a separate country but is also in Schengen and on the euro, so the day trip needs nothing extra.
Around the city and the coast
- The coastal railway is the point of basing here. Trains run close to the water in both directions — west to Antibes and Cannes, east through Villefranche and Monaco to the Italian border — frequently enough that a day out needs no more planning than checking the last train back.
- Trams and walking cover the city itself. One line runs the airport-to-old-town axis and another crosses it; the centre, the promenade and Vieux Nice are all comfortably walkable, and the hill museums are a short bus ride.
- Do not hire a car for the coast. The corniche roads are slow in season, parking in the coastal towns is scarce and expensive, and everything the packages visit is on the railway. If Provence is also on the itinerary, collect the car inland and give it back before you arrive.
Practicalities
- Cards are accepted everywhere including on transport, and tap water is safe — the public fountains are drinkable and refilling a bottle is normal here.
- The usual city sense applies around the station, on crowded trams and along the promenade at night: bags closed and in front of you, phones off café tables. Nothing about Nice needs more caution than that.
- Accessibility along the seafront is good — the promenade and the Promenade du Paillon are flat and continuous, and the trams are step-free. Vieux Nice is cobbled and narrow, and the castle hill is steep, though a lift serves it from the eastern end.
Nice essentials
The things worth settling before you arrive.
France is in the eurozone. Cards work almost everywhere including on trams and trains; cash is rarely needed.
English is comfortable across the tourism trade. The old town carries bilingual French and Niçard street plaques, a survival of the pre-1860 county.
France is in the European Union and the Schengen area. Requirements change, so confirm the current position with your specialist rather than relying on any page.
Large smooth stones, shelving steeply into clear deep water. Excellent for swimming, uncomfortable for lying on without a mat, and worth knowing in advance.
Spring and autumn are the best of it. August is hot and full, and this coast was originally a winter resort — the off season is genuinely pleasant here.
The coastal railway reaches everything the itineraries visit. Corniche traffic is slow in season and coastal parking is scarce and expensive.
How to be a good guest
A county that changed countries in 1860, and a city that never entirely changed language.
Why it feels Italian
- Because it was. The County of Nice was a dominion of Savoy from 1388, briefly French during the Revolution, then returned to the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia — and was ceded to France only in 1860, under the Treaty of Turin, ratified by a plebiscite that April.
- The evidence is still on the plate and the street sign. Niçard, the local Occitan dialect, appears on the bilingual plaques in the old town, and the city’s unofficial anthem is Nissa La Bella. The food is Ligurian in ancestry more than Provençal.
- The architecture divides on the same line: tall narrow Genoese-style houses in the old town, and behind them the wide nineteenth-century French city built for the winter visitors who arrived after the annexation.
The invention of the winter season
- The English upper classes began wintering here in the eighteenth century for the mild air, not the sea, and paid for the promenade that carries their name. The Russian aristocracy followed, which is why there is an Orthodox cathedral with onion domes a few streets from the station.
- UNESCO inscribed Nice in 2021 as a winter resort town of the Riviera — for the way that international clientele shaped the city’s layout, architecture and gardens, rather than for any single monument.
- It also explains the seasons here. This coast was built as a winter destination and only became a summer one much later, which is why the city is genuinely pleasant out of season when much of the smaller coast is shut.
Insider tips
What travellers from India most often get wrong here.
Expectations
- The beach is stones. It is the single most common surprise in Nice, and it is not a defect — the water is clean, clear and deep close in. Bring or buy a mat and swim shoes and it stops being an issue in an afternoon.
- Nice is a city, not a resort. It has traffic, a working port, ordinary suburbs and an airport in the middle of the seafront. That is precisely what makes it a good base, but travellers expecting a small seaside town are briefly disappointed.
- Do not try to sleep in a different town each night. The coast is a railway, not a road trip; basing here and going out each day is faster, cheaper and far less tiring than moving along it.
Getting the days right
- Do the hill early or late. The Colline du Château gives the view everyone comes for, and it is both cooler and better lit outside the middle of the day.
- Take the coastal train rather than the corniche coach where you have the choice. It is quicker, it runs on time, it goes past the water, and it removes the parking problem entirely.
- Check what is on before you book. The Carnival in late winter and the summer festivals fill the city and push rates up sharply — worth either seeking out or avoiding deliberately.
Being a good guest
- Say bonjour on entering. In France it is not a pleasantry, it is the price of admission to a shop or a bar, and skipping it is read as rudeness rather than shyness.
- Cover shoulders and knees for the churches, including the cathedral in the old town and the Orthodox cathedral near the station. A scarf in the bag settles it.
- Eat when the city eats. Kitchens close between lunch and dinner and the old town does not serve a main meal at four in the afternoon; plan around it rather than against it.
Around Nice
What sits within reach along the coast, before the région opens out inland.
Related to Nice
Journeys that include Nice — each one visits the city as part of its itinerary.
Common questions
Plan your journey
Our travel designers turn knowledge and inspiration into a journey crafted entirely around you.
Plan My Journey →