Things to do
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Cathédrale Saint-Nicolas
Six onion domes and pink brick behind the rail line, raised in 1912 for the Russian aristocracy that wintered here and paid for by the last Tsar. It remains the largest Orthodox building outside Russia in western Europe and is still a working parish. Shoulders covered, and photography is restricted inside the nave.
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Château de Nice
Louis XIV had the citadel on this hill demolished in 1706 and the ground is now a park of pines, an artificial waterfall and the widest view over the bay and the old roofs. A lift climbs from the seafront end and a stepped path from the port side. The cathedral foundations are visible under the trees.
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Cours Saleya
A long open square along the edge of the old town, given to flowers and produce every morning except Monday, when antique dealers take it instead. Socca, the chickpea pancake that is the local street food, is cooked on copper trays at the far end. Matisse lived in the yellow building on the corner for seventeen years.
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Monastère de Cimiez
Franciscans have held this hilltop since the sixteenth century, and the church keeps three Bréa altarpieces from the Nice school of painting. The formal garden behind it is the older attraction, a terrace of clipped hedges and roses looking across to the Baie des Anges. Matisse and Dufy are both buried in the cemetery next door.
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Musée des Beaux-Arts Jules Chéret
A Russian princess built this villa in 1878 and the city turned it into the fine-art collection: Dutch and Italian rooms downstairs, Van Loo, Boudin and Sisley above, and a floor given to the poster designer whose name it carries. It sits west of the centre in a quiet residential street, which keeps it uncrowded.
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Musée Marc-Chagall
Built to the painter's own brief in 1973 to hold seventeen large canvases on the books of Genesis, Exodus and the Song of Songs, hung in rooms he specified and lit as he wanted them. A concert hall with his stained glass sits alongside. The scale of the pictures is the point and no reproduction carries it.
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Musée Matisse
A red Genoese villa in the olive grove at Cimiez holding what the painter kept and what his family gave afterwards, from the early dark canvases to the late cut paper. The collection is not a survey of his best work; it is what stayed in the house, which makes the drawings and the studio objects the reason to come.
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Palais Lascaris
Genoese baroque in the middle of the old town, built for an aristocratic family in the 1650s and preserved with its painted ceilings, its balustraded staircase and an eighteenth-century pharmacy on the ground floor. Upstairs holds one of the strongest collections of historic musical instruments in France. Free to enter, and easy to walk past.
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Place Masséna
Red arcaded facades around a chequered pavement, with seven kneeling figures on masts by Jaume Plensa that change colour after dark. Trams cross the middle. It is the hinge between the old town, the shopping streets and the water gardens of the Paillon, so most walks through the centre pass over it twice.
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Port Lympia
Cut out of marshland in the eighteenth century and framed on three sides by ochre and terracotta houses, this is where the Corsica ferries load and where the fishing boats still tie up. The quay restaurants face the water. Walking round it from the castle hill takes about twenty minutes and gives the best view back at the old town.
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Promenade des Anglais
Seven kilometres of seafront laid out from 1820 with money raised by the English colony wintering here, which is where the name comes from. Blue chairs face the water the whole way and the pebble beach below is public in stretches and concessioned in others. Traffic runs on one side, cyclists and walkers on the other.
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Vieux-Nice
Lanes too narrow for cars, running between the castle hill and the Cours Saleya, with baroque church fronts appearing without warning between shops. The plan is medieval and the decoration is Genoese, which is the clearest reminder that this was an Italian city for most of its history. Best walked early, before the lanes fill.