Highlights of Nice, Nice, France

The capital of the French Riviera may enjoy continuous fame as “the playground for the rich”, but it is in essence a big city with big-city attractions. Certainly, there are plenty of visual highlights to be found in town, and yet its cultural offerings - museums, theaters, varied cuisine - far outstrip the visual effect.

We spent a few days in and around Nice over twenty years ago, exploring it to some degree. Since then, we largely skirted the city in favor of other destinations on the Azure Coast. On this last trip, with our base literally next door in Villefranche-sur-Mer, we set aside a day to reacquaint ourselves with Nice just a bit. A selection of pictures from that not-very-extensive walk is below.

The seven seated-men statues on high poles are a reasonably recent addition to the square, erected in 2014. They seemingly have no official name (at least, not that I could find anywhere) and are meant to represent the continents and the communication between societies.

After dark, the statues are reputedly lit up in different colors, a spectacle for which we did not manage to be around.

The Old Town of Nice is mostly pedestrian-only, with tight confines and occasional picturesque corners. ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).