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Few cities in France carry quite the same visual weight as Nice. Set where the Alps descend almost directly into the Mediterranean, it occupies a curved bay, the Baie des Anges, that has drawn painters, aristocrats, and winter refugees for centuries. The light here is particular: sharp and southern, bouncing off pale ochre facades and the flat blue sea in a way that made it a subject for Matisse, who spent much of his later life in the city and whose legacy endures at the Musée Matisse up in the Cimiez neighbourhood, surrounded by Roman ruins and rose gardens.

The old town, Vieux-Nice, is the obvious place to begin. Its narrow lanes follow a Baroque grid laid out under Savoyard rule, and the architecture owes as much to Genoa as to Paris, a reminder that Nice only became French in 1860. The Cours Saleya market fills the main square each morning with flowers, olives, and socca, the chickpea flatbread that locals treat as a birthright. Above the old town, the Colline du Château offers a panorama across the rooftops and along the Promenade des Anglais, the long seafront boulevard whose name records the English community that funded its construction in the nineteenth century.