Nice

Nice is a city on the Mediterranean coast of southeastern France, the capital of the Alpes-Maritimes department close to the Italian border. The Promenade des Anglais follows the Baie des Anges and takes its name from the English residents who paid for the first seaside path in the 1820s. Nice gave its name to salade niçoise, a salad of tomatoes, olives, eggs and anchovies.

Greek settlers from Massalia founded the port of Nikaia on the coast in the 4th century BC, and the Romans later built a town on the hill above it. Nice placed itself under the House of Savoy in 1388 and stayed under its rule, with short breaks, for nearly five centuries. It passed to France in 1860 after a treaty and a vote of its people. The railway from Paris arrived in the 1860s, and British and Russian aristocrats spent their winters in its villas and hotels. Henri Matisse settled in the city in the 1910s and painted there for the rest of his life.

The Port of Nice sends ferries to Corsica from its harbor below Castle Hill. Bellet wine, grown on the slopes above the Var within the city limits, has its own appellation, and the olive groves of the hills behind Nice give the small black Cailletier olive.

Castle Hill rises between the old town and the port, with a park and a waterfall on the site of the medieval castle. The Matisse Museum, in a red 17th-century villa among the olive trees of the Cimiez hill, holds paintings and paper cut-outs from every period of his work. The Nice Carnival, held each February, is known for its parade of giant figures and its battle of flowers along the Promenade.