Homer's Odyssey in 13 Easy Steps, Nice, France

If it’s been a while since you’ve read the Greek classics (or if you just never got around to it) no worries! There’s no need to pull out the books. In Nice, France you can take a quick 13-step refresher course on a hilltop overlooking the sea, the city, and the port. This lovely park is called the Colline du Chateau or “Castle Hill” and on the port side, you will find a short flight of stairs decorated with mosaics giving a quick review of Homer’s Odyssey.

You might wonder what all this “Greekness” has to do with Nice, France. Well quite a bit, actually. The Greeks settled on this very hilltop around the fourth century BC and called it Nikaia after the goddess of victory (the same one the Nike sports shoe is named after) and the name eventually evolved into Nice.

In the 1960s when the city was renovating the park they decided to add mosaics with a Greek theme as a nod to this hilltop’s Greek heritage. The results are lovely and you will see many mosaics scattered around the park, but for now let’s start on our own little odyssey.

Odysseus (or Ulysse as he’s known in French) in his army gear: He went off to fight the Trojan War which lasted 10 years. When it ended he got on a ship and headed home, but things didn’t go as planned. It ended up taking another 10 years and many adventures before he was able to return to his patiently waiting wife back on the Greek isle of Ithica. ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).