Every design for Antibes

Below the ramparts of the old town, the little Gravette beach sits close to where Antibes began. Greek settlers from Massalia founded Antipolis here, the "city opposite", named for its place across the Var estuary from Nice. Traces of Iron Age life have turned up around the castle and the cathedral, amphorae and wrecks lie on the seabed offshore, and by the fifth century the town had its own bishop. In the Middle Ages its lordship passed from Provençal knights to the bishopric, and the Fort-Carré still keeps watch beyond a harbour that is now the largest yachting harbour in Europe.

That long past does not feel like a museum, even though the Musée Picasso and the Musée d'Archéologie hold a good part of it. It feels more like late light on old stone, salt air in narrow lanes, and the sense that everyone who has lived here has looked across the same Baie des Anges towards Nice. Out towards the cape, the Plage de la Salis and the Plage de Ponteil fill up as soon as the water warms.

Grow up in Antibes and the map is already part of you: the rock, the port, the cape and the walk home from the beach.