12 Things You Don’t Know About the French Riviera That Aren’t About Brigitte Bardot, The Cannes Film Festival, or the Monaco Grand Prix

The French Riviera might just be the most photographed coastline on Earth.

You’ve seen it a thousand times. Cary Grant in his open-top convertible flying along the Corniche road in To Catch a Thief. Grace Kelly stepping off a yacht in Monaco. The cobalt blue water, the palm trees, the impossibly tanned people sipping rosé on a hotel terrace.

And if you’ve read your share of books about the place, you already know the famous bits. Picasso painting in Antibes, Henri Matisse in Nice, and F. Scott Fitzgerald drinking his way through the 1920s with Zelda at his side.

Beneath the glitz lies a Riviera most visitors never discover. I’ve spent a lot of time digging into the stories that don’t make it into the standard travel guides. 

12 Things You Don’t Know About the French Riviera

Pour yourself a glass of something cold, settle in, and let me take you behind the postcard.

1. The Promenade des Anglais Was Built by Beggars

The most famous boulevard on the Riviera, the elegant seven-kilometer stretch of palm trees and azure sea where the world’s wealthy have strolled for two centuries, has a remarkable origin story that very few people know.

In the late 1700s, wealthy English aristocrats had started wintering in Nice to escape the cold and damp of home. They loved the climate, but they were frustrated. They wanted to walk along the seafront, breathing in what their doctors called the “health-restoring air,” but they couldn’t, because the shoreline was a marshy, rocky mess.

Then came the disaster of 1820. After two years of failed harvests and a particularly brutal winter, Nice was overrun with desperate, hungry people. Beggars filled the streets, hoping to coax a few coins out of rich tourists. The English, raised in a Victorian culture that frowned on charity for the able-bodied, refused to hand over their money to people they thought should be working.

Then the local Anglican priest, Reverend Lewis Way, came up with what may be one of the most elegant solutions in the history of social policy. He took up a collection from his English congregation and used it to hire the unemployed and the destitute to build a walkway along the sea. 

Everyone won. The English got the seafront promenade they had been dreaming of, and the hungry got paid work and food on the table. The city of Nice got a piece of infrastructure that would, within a century, become the most fashionable boulevard in Europe.

The locals first called it the Camin dei Anglés in their old Niçard dialect, meaning the English Way. After Nice became part of France in 1860, it was rechristened La Promenade des Anglais. The name has stuck for over 160 years.

2. Those Iconic Blue Chairs Were Originally White

You’ve seen them in countless photographs. The cobalt blue lounge chairs lined up along the Promenade des Anglais, facing out to sea, the symbol of Riviera leisure.

But they weren’t always blue.

When the marine furniture supplier Jacques Ballanger commissioned 800 of them in 1948 to replace the worn-out wicker ones, they were painted plain white. The signature blue color didn’t appear until 1850, chosen so the chairs would echo the colors of the sea and sky and wouldn’t be confused with the white park benches dotted around Nice’s gardens.

And until quite recently, you had to pay to sit on one. The city employed people called chaisières who collected the fees and issued tickets. If a chaisière caught you lounging without a ticket, you could be fined.

Today, the chairs are free, but they’re still a piece of living Riviera history. They’ve been sat on by everyone from Queen Victoria’s grandchildren to Brigitte Bardot to whichever Hollywood A-lister is in town this week. The chair you choose at random has likely held a fascinating array of bottoms.

3. Salade Niçoise Has Been Getting It Wrong for Over a Century

Walk into any restaurant in America, France, or anywhere else in the world, order a salade Niçoise, and there’s a good chance it’ll arrive with boiled potatoes and green beans on top.

The people of Nice will tell you, with a tightness in their voice that suggests this has been bothering them for generations, that this is wrong.

The original salad was poor people’s food in 19th-century Nice. It started as a snack for fishermen and laborers and consisted of just three ingredients. Tomatoes, anchovies, and olive oil. That was it. Sometimes the mixture was tucked into a piece of stale bread to soften it back to edible, creating a sandwich called the pan bagnat (bathed bread in Nissard dialect), which is still widely popular as a Niçois street food.

Over the decades, the salad version evolved to include hard-boiled eggs, black olives, raw red peppers, and tuna. But never, ever, did it include cooked vegetables.

According to Niçois purists, the villain of this story is the most famous French chef of all time, Auguste Escoffier. Escoffier, born just 16 kilometers from Nice in Villeneuve-Loubet, should have known better. But in his enormously influential cookbooks, he proudly published a Parisian version of the salad with potatoes and green beans tossed in.

That single recipe traveled around the world and became the international standard. Niçois purists have been spitting tacks about it ever since. There’s even a society in Nice called the Cercle de la Capelina d’Or whose members have spent the last several decades trying to reclaim the authentic version.

4. Grasse, the Perfume Capital of the World, Used to Stink

The little hilltop town of Grasse, about an hour inland from Cannes, produces around 75% of the world’s luxury perfume essence. Chanel No. 5, Christian Dior, Estée Lauder. They all source their core ingredients from the jasmine, rose, and lavender fields around Grasse.

But four hundred years ago, Grasse smelled, by all accounts, absolutely terrible.

The town’s original industry was leather tanning. Tanning, for the uninitiated, involves animal fats, lime, urine, and other things you really don’t want anywhere near your face. The smell coming off Grasse’s tanneries was so strong that you could pick the town out from miles away just by following your nose.

In the 1500s, a fashionable new product arrived from Italy. Scented leather gloves, originally designed by Italian glove-makers to mask the stench of poorly tanned leather. Catherine de’ Medici, the Italian-born Queen of France, fell madly in love with them. A Grasse tanner named Jean de Galimard reportedly presented her with a pair of gloves perfumed with local flowers, and she was hooked.

Catherine made scented gloves the height of fashion at the French court, and Grasse seized the moment. Local farmers planted jasmine, rose, lavender, and orange blossom on every available patch of land. The microclimate, sheltered by the mountains and warmed by the sea breeze, proved perfect for growing these flowers. The town pivoted from leather to perfume.

Some bishops of the era were less impressed by the new direction. They reportedly nicknamed Grasse “la gueuse parfumée,” which translates roughly to “the scented slut,” a sniffy reference to what they saw as the town’s frivolous love of luxury.

Catherine’s glove-maker, Galimard, founded a perfumery in 1747 that is still in business today. It’s the third-oldest perfume house in Europe. You can visit it, take a workshop, and create your own perfume to take home. UNESCO put Grasse’s perfume-making know-how on the Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2018.

Not bad for a town that used to smell like a slaughterhouse.

5. Monaco Is Smaller Than Central Park

Monaco occupies just 0.78 square miles. Central Park in New York City is 1.31 square miles. You could fit the entire principality inside Central Park and still have roughly 40% of the park left over.

Despite being one of the smallest countries in the world (only Vatican City is smaller), Monaco packs a remarkable amount into its tiny footprint. There’s a royal palace, a parliament, a famous casino, world-class hospitals, multiple yacht harbors, the Formula 1 Grand Prix circuit, and around 39,000 residents. About a third of those residents are millionaires.

A few other facts to chew on. Monaco has no airport, because there’s no room for one. You arrive by helicopter from Nice (a seven-minute flight) or by car, train, or yacht.

It also has no army. France defends Monaco from any potential invasion, which is just as well because the principality could probably be conquered in under an hour by anyone with a moderately sized walking group. There’s roughly one police officer for every 100 citizens, though, and the surveillance camera coverage is so dense that Monaco is considered one of the safest places on Earth.

The royal Grimaldi family has ruled Monaco since 1297, making them one of the oldest reigning dynasties in Europe. Prince Albert II, the current ruler, competed in five consecutive Winter Olympics in the bobsleigh. His wife, Princess Charlene, won swimming medals for South Africa before her marriage. Their daughter Princess Gabriella is, statistically speaking, far more likely to inherit a country than most of us are to inherit anything at all.

And finally, Monaco residents pay no income tax. None. Zero.

6. The Menton Lemon Festival Began Because of Eve

The little pastel-colored town of Menton, tucked right up against the Italian border, holds a wonderful festival every February. The Fête du Citron, or Lemon Festival, draws around 230,000 visitors each year and uses 145 tonnes of citrus fruit to build 30-foot sculptures and parade floats made entirely of lemons and oranges.

Why lemons? The answer involves the Garden of Eden.

According to a local legend that Menton residents tell with a perfectly straight face, when Adam and Eve were expelled from paradise, Eve secretly took a golden fruit with her. Adam begged her to throw it away (he hadn’t forgotten the apple incident). But Eve refused. She held onto the fruit until she found a place that reminded her of Eden, and there she planted it. That place, of course, was the Bay of Garavan, just below where Menton stands today.

Whether or not you choose to believe the legend, the more practical truth is that Menton has a remarkable microclimate. It’s the warmest, sunniest spot on the entire French Mediterranean coast, perfect for growing citrus. By 1928, Menton was the number one lemon producer in all of Europe.

That same year, a hotelier had the idea of organizing a small lemon and flower exhibition to amuse the wealthy English and Russian aristocrats who wintered in town. It was such a hit that the city took it over. The official Fête du Citron was born in 1934.

Today, around 400 workers spend months designing and constructing the giant citrus sculptures. After the festival, the fruit is collected, turned into marmalade and limoncello, and sold across Europe. Nothing goes to waste.

If Eve really did smuggle out a lemon, she’d probably be pleased.

7. Walt Disney Sketched His Fairy-Tale Castles in Èze

Halfway between Nice and Monaco, clinging to a rocky outcrop nearly 1,400 feet above the sea, sits the medieval village of Èze.

It is, without exaggeration, one of the most beautiful villages in France. The narrow stone streets wind upward in a maze, every corner reveals a new view of the impossibly blue Mediterranean below, and the whole place looks like it’s been pulled from a children’s storybook.

That’s not a coincidence.

In the early 1950s, an American visitor fell hopelessly in love with Èze and spent considerable time wandering its streets and sketching in his notebook. His name was Walt Disney. The drawings he made in the village would later inspire elements of the fairy-tale castles that appear in his animated films and at his theme parks.

Disney stayed at a place called the Château de la Chèvre d’Or, which translates to the Castle of the Golden Goat. At the time, it wasn’t actually a hotel. Robert Wolff bought the building in 1953 and turned it into a restaurant. 

According to local legend, Disney enjoyed his visit so much that he suggested Wolff convert the place into a hotel. Wolff took the advice, and seven years later, the Château de la Chèvre d’Or opened its doors as a five-star hotel. It’s still operating today, and rooms regularly host princes, presidents, and celebrities.

8. The Summer Beach Holiday Was Invented by Two Americans in 1923

Until exactly one hundred years ago, the French Riviera was empty in summer. The aristocrats who flocked there in winter for the mild climate packed up and left when the weather got hot. Hotels closed, shutters went up, and the beaches, completely undeveloped, were typically buried under four feet of seaweed.

Then, in 1923, an American couple, Gerald and Sara Murphy, moved into a villa just below the Antibes lighthouse and changed everything.

The Murphys were independently wealthy expat artists who had relocated to France for a more affordable life on a strong dollar. They didn’t follow social rules. When they decided they wanted to swim, they walked down to the local beach and personally cleared four feet of seaweed off a stretch of sand by hand. They installed a portable phonograph, played jazz records, and lay around in the sun in their bathing suits.

Then they invited their friends to join them.

Their friends happened to be Pablo Picasso, Cole Porter, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zelda Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, John Dos Passos, and Rudolph Valentino.

You can imagine what happened next. The most famous artists and writers of the Jazz Age started spending their summers picnicking on the beach with the Murphys. The locals were scandalized, but the hoteliers smelled opportunity. Within five years, hotels were staying open in summer, beaches were being cleared all along the coast, and the entire concept of a summer seaside vacation had been invented.

Their stylish home, Villa America, had a flat roof terrace, black floors, white walls, and stainless steel fittings. It looked like nothing the Riviera had seen before. Picasso, sitting on the once-deserted beach watching it fill with sunbathers, reportedly said that he and the Murphys had a lot to answer for.

The Murphys themselves didn’t get a happy ending. Their son was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1929, and they returned to America in 1933, but their influence on the Riviera, and on summer vacations everywhere, was already permanent.

So next time you’re stretched out on a beach towel anywhere in the world, raise a quiet glass to Gerald and Sara.

9. Some of Humanity’s Earliest Fire Was Lit in Nice

Tucked into a quiet residential neighborhood of Nice, just a few blocks from the modern Promenade des Anglais, sits one of the most important archaeological sites in Europe. It’s called Terra Amata.

In 1966, when builders were excavating the foundations for an apartment block, they uncovered something extraordinary. Layered into the soil were hearths, stone tools, and traces of ancient encampments dating back roughly 400,000 years. The site contained some of the earliest known evidence of humans deliberately controlling fire anywhere in the world.

The site is now preserved as a museum. It’s called the Musée de Paléontologie Humaine de Terra Amata, and it sits at 25 Boulevard Carnot. 

10. Nice Has Only Been French for 166 Years

Most visitors assume Nice has always been French. But, for most of the past thousand years, Nice belonged to Italy. Specifically, it was part of the Kingdom of Sardinia under the House of Savoy, an Italian-speaking dynasty that ruled large parts of what is now northern Italy.

Nice only officially joined France in 1860, after a referendum offered to the locals as part of a deal between Napoleon III and the Italian unification movement. This explains a lot about the city.

The food, for one. Many of the dishes Niçois consider their own are essentially Italian. Socca, the chickpea pancake sold from carts in the old town, is the same dish as Genoese farinata. Pissaladière, the local onion-and-anchovy tart, is a near-cousin of Italian pizza bianca. The famous Niçois ravioli are stuffed with leftovers, an Italian peasant tradition.

The language is even more telling. Older locals still speak Nissard, a dialect closer to Italian than to French. You’ll see it on street signs throughout the old town. Words like “Plaça” and “Carriera” sit alongside their French equivalents.

The architecture is Italian too. The orange and ochre buildings, the green shutters, the narrow alleyways, the open piazzas. Walk through Vieux Nice with your eyes half-closed, and you’d swear you were in Genoa.

11. There’s a Cannon That Fires Every Day at Noon, and It Started With a Lonely Englishman

Climb the hill of the Château in old Nice at exactly noon, on any day of the year, and you’ll hear an enormous boom roll out across the city. It’s the cannon firing.

The tradition started in the 1860s, and the story behind it is wonderful.

A retired Scottish nobleman named Sir Thomas Coventry-More had moved to Nice to enjoy his later years. Every day at noon, he’d come home from his morning walk to lunch with his wife. The problem was that his wife was forever late. Lunch was never ready when he arrived. He’d wait, hungry and increasingly grumpy, while she fussed in the kitchen.

Frustrated beyond measure, Sir Thomas paid the city to fire a cannon from Mont Boron at noon every day so his wife would have no excuse for not having lunch ready. The whole town adopted the signal, and the cannon has been fired every day since. Today, it’s done with a small explosive charge from the Colline du Château rather than an actual cannon, but the tradition continues.

Whether the Coventry-More story is strictly true or has been embellished over the years is debated, but why let the truth get in the way of a good story?

12. The Cannes Film Festival Was Created Out of Spite

The most prestigious film festival in the world was a giant act of revenge.

In the 1930s, the only major international film festival was the Venice Film Festival, established in 1932. As fascism took hold in Italy, the festival became increasingly politicized. By 1938, the top prize was being awarded based on Mussolini’s preferences and Hitler’s tastes, with German propaganda films like Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia winning out over works by French and American filmmakers.

The French were furious. They decided to create their own festival as a deliberate alternative, one that would celebrate cinema as art rather than politics.

A French film historian named Philippe Erlanger pitched the idea, and the French government got behind it. After considering several locations, including Biarritz on the Atlantic coast, they chose Cannes for its sunshine, glamour, and existing luxury hotel infrastructure.

The first Cannes Film Festival was supposed to open on September 1, 1939. The opening film was scheduled to be The Hunchback of Notre Dame, starring Charles Laughton.

That same morning, Hitler invaded Poland, so understandably, the festival was canceled before it had even begun.

It didn’t actually happen until 1946, when the Second World War was over. Once it did, it grew into the cultural phenomenon we know today. Around 40,000 industry professionals descend on Cannes every May, with a red carpet stretching up the steps of the Palais des Festivals.

The yachts in the harbor cost more than most people’s houses. And it all exists because a group of French film lovers in 1939 refused to let Mussolini and Hitler decide what made a great movie.