The Season That Built Another Nice
UNESCO calls Nice a “Winter Resort Town of the Riviera”. The wording catches visitors off guard because the town is now so closely associated with summer. Yet the people who began spending winters here wanted a different sort of holiday. They came from colder parts of Europe to live with the Mediterranean climate between the sea and the mountains, rather than to spend their days in the water.
As more people began treating a winter stay as a habit, the old town could no longer contain the places being made for them. New districts grew alongside it, with buildings whose owners expected to look out onto the landscape and enjoy the gentle light. Hotels served visitors passing through; villas suited families who wanted a place to themselves.
On a winter walk, those new quarters remain the better place to look for the old resort. The villas and hotel fronts have rather more to say about seasonal visitors than a patch of pebbles ever could.
The English Wanted Somewhere to Walk
Take the Promenade des Anglais in winter, with the pebble shore beside you and the sea running along the edge of the path. It is easy to assume that a coastal city would always have given its shore a proper walkway. The promenade began far more simply, as a path laid out for British visitors spending the cold season in Nice.
The early path was called Camin dei Ingles, a local name meaning the English way. The British winter community helped create it, and the Reverend Lewis Way was among those behind the project. Their subscriptions paid local people to prepare the seafront walk. There is a certain English determination in seeing a coastline and deciding that the missing amenity is a decent place to take a stroll.
Nice later extended the path into the promenade that bears the English name.
A Street Plan That Faced the Sun
The newer streets have a quieter way of advertising the winter resort. Stand where a row of façades catches the southern light and the buildings seem to have been placed for the benefit of their windows. UNESCO makes much the same point about Nice’s street plan: its north–south axes and cross streets favour façades facing south, while opening views to the sea and the hills.
The rules behind this were unusually frank about their audience. The Consiglio d’Ornato, a council concerned with the town’s appearance, drew up a plan and building requirements intended to make Nice attractive to foreigners. Sun on the front of a building was evidently a useful part of the invitation.
A window looks like a domestic detail, but here the street plan had decided where it would face before the wall went up.
A Hotel With Room for a Queen
Cimiez, above the centre, gives the winter visitors a more imposing address. The Excelsior Régina was built as a hotel on the hill, and Queen Victoria came to stay there on her visits to Nice. The building was prepared with a wing for the queen and her household. A private wing is a fairly clear indication that the hotel’s intended visitor was not travelling lightly.
A marble statue of Victoria stands in front of the long frontage, placing a recognisable face beside the building that received her.
The hotel later became apartments. Henri Matisse lived and worked in the former Régina, making a home and studio inside a building originally prepared for winter visitors.
The Trees Were Part of the Invitation
In Nice’s resort districts, the planting belongs to the same winter story as the houses. UNESCO notes that parks and gardens were stocked with species acclimatised to the local conditions, many brought from elsewhere. Palms above the paths give the streets a look that the visitors from northern countries would hardly have associated with home.
Stand by a garden wall and the palm fronds sit against a villa rather than a stretch of sand.
Sea bathing and the summer season later took over. Visitors arrived expecting a different holiday from the families who had once come south in winter. But on a street laid out to catch the southern light, the façades still face the season that built them.
