Explorar Villefranche-sur-Mer

The Rue Obscure is a vaulted street about 130 metres long in the old town of Villefranche-sur-Mer, dating from the 13th century. It began as an open patrol walk along the medieval rampart and was roofed over bit by bit between the 16th and 18th centuries as houses grew above it. Jean Cocteau filmed scenes of Le Testament d'Orphée here in 1959.

The Citadelle Saint-Elme is a bastioned fortress begun around 1554 for the Dukes of Savoy to guard the harbour of Villefranche-sur-Mer. Bought by the town in 1965, it now holds the town hall, gardens and an art centre with temporary exhibitions; its museum collections, including the sculptures of Volti, have been closed for renovation since 2022.

The Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild is a pink seaside villa on the isthmus of Cap Ferrat, built between 1907 and 1912 for Béatrice Ephrussi de Rothschild to designs by the architect Aaron Messiah. Its rooms hold her collections of furniture, paintings and porcelain, and nine themed gardens surround it. She left the estate to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1934.

Castle Hill is the rocky hill between the old town and the port of Nice, where the town's castle stood from the 11th century until Louis XIV had it demolished in 1706. It is now a 19-hectare public park with shaded paths, the remains of the castle and the old cathedral, a waterfall built in 1885 and viewpoints over the Baie des Anges and the harbour.

Nice Cathedral, dedicated to the Virgin Mary and Saint Reparata, stands on Place Rossetti in the old town and is the seat of the Bishop of Nice. The Baroque church was built from 1650 to 1685 to plans by the Nice architect J. A. Guibert; the bell tower followed in 1731–1757 and the façade in 1825–1830, and a 39-metre lantern dome rises over the crossing.

The Musée Matisse is the City of Nice's museum of Henri Matisse, who lived and worked in Nice from 1917 until his death in 1954. Opened in 1963 in the Villa des Arènes, a red 17th-century Genoese villa on the Cimiez hill beside the Roman ruins, it holds paintings, drawings, cut-outs, nearly all his sculptures and objects from his studio.

Place Masséna is the main square of Nice, between the old town and Avenue Jean-Médecin, named after Marshal André Masséna. Its layout follows a plan by the city architect Joseph Vernier adopted in 1843, with red-ochre arcaded buildings in the style of Turin, and today it has black-and-white chequerboard paving and the Fontaine du Soleil with bronzes by Alfred Janniot.

The Basilica of Notre-Dame is the largest church in Nice, on Avenue Jean-Médecin in the city centre. Built in Neo-Gothic style from 1864, a few years after Nice became French, it takes the cathedrals of Paris and Angers as models: two square towers frame a large rose window with scenes of the Assumption of the Virgin. It was made a minor basilica in 1978.

The St Nicholas Russian Orthodox Cathedral stands in a private park off Boulevard du Tzaréwitch, on the estate where the Russian heir Nicholas Alexandrovich died in 1865. Designed by Mikhail Preobrazhensky and built in 1903–1912 with support from Tsar Nicholas II, it has five onion domes and an icon-filled interior, and a crypt museum on the Russian presence on the Riviera.

The Promenade des Anglais is the seafront promenade of Nice, running about 7 kilometres along the Baie des Anges from the airport to the Quai des États-Unis below the old town. It began in the 1820s as a footpath paid for by members of the English community, and today pairs a wide walkway and cycle path with palm trees, pebble beaches and hotels such as the Negresco.