Promenade des Anglais and the beaches
France > Côte d'Azur > Riviera > Nice > Promenade des Anglais

Promenade des Anglais

The point where the Paillon flows into the sea marks the beginning of the world-famous palm-fringed promenade des Anglais, created by nineteenth-century English residents for their afternoon's sea-breeze stroll along the Mediterranean sea coast. Today it's the city's unofficial high-speed racetrack, bordered by some of the most fanciful turn-of-the-twentieth-century architecture on the Côte d'Azur.

Most celebrated of all is the opulent Negresco Hotel at no. 37, built in 1906, and filling up the block between rues de Rivoli and Cronstadt. Though they will try to stop you if you are not deemed to be wearing tenue correcte (especially in the evenings), you can try wandering in to take a look at the Salon Louis XIV and the Salon Royale. The first, on the left of the foyer, has a seventeenth-century painted oak ceiling and mammoth fireplace, plus royal portraits, all from various French châteaux. The Salon Royale, in the centre of the hotel, is a vast domed oval room, decorated with 24-carat gold leaf and the biggest carpet ever to have come out of the Savonnerie workshops. The chandelier is one of a pair commissioned from Baccarat by Tsar Nicholas II – the other hangs in the Kremlin.

Just before the Negresco, with its entrance at 65 rue de France, stands the Musée Masséna, the city's art and history museum. Closed for major renovations until 2004, only its unexceptional, but shady gardens are open to the public (daily 9am–6pm).

A kilometre or so down the promenade and a couple of blocks inland at 33 av des Baumettes is the Musée des Beaux-Arts (Tues–Sun 10am–noon & 2–6pm; bus #38, stop "Chéret"). It has too many whimsical canvases by Jules Chéret, who died in Nice in 1932, a great many Belle Époque paintings to go with the building, a room dedicated to the Van Loos, plus modern works that come as unexpected delights: a Rodin bust of Victor Hugo and some very amusing Van Dongens, such as the Archangel's Tango. Monet, Sisley – one of his famous poplar alleys – and Degas also grace the walls. Continuing southwest along the promenade des Anglais towards the airport, you'll find the Musée International d'Art Naïf Anatole Jakovsky (daily except Tues 10am–noon & 2–6pm; €3.80), home to a refreshingly different, and surprisingly good, collection of over six hundred pieces of amateur art from around the world.

The beach below the promenade des Anglais is all pebbles and mostly public, with showers provided. It's not particularly clean and you need to watch out for broken glass. There are, of course, the mattress, food and drinks concessionaries, but nothing like to the extent of Cannes. There's a small, more secluded beach on the west side of Le Château, below the sea wall of the port. But the best, and cleanest, place to swim, if you don't mind rocks, is the string of coves beyond the port that starts with the plage de la Reserve opposite parc Vigier (bus #32 or #3). From the water you can look up at the nineteenth-century fantasy palaces built onto the steep slopes of the Cap du Nice. Further up, past Coco Beach (bus #3 only, stop "Villa La Côte"), rather smelly steps lead down to a coastal path which continues around the headland. Towards dusk this becomes a gay pick-up place.

On the far side of the castle sits the old port, flanked by gorgeous red to ochre eighteenth-century buildings and headed by the Neoclassical Notre-Dame du Port; it's full of bulbous yachts but has little quayside life despite the restaurants along quai Lunel. On the hill to the east, prehistoric life in the region has been reconstructed on the site of an excavated fossil beach in the well-designed Musée de Terra Amata, 25 bd Carnot (Tues–Sun 9am–noon & 2–6pm; €3.80).