Every design for Nice

Nice lies on the French Riviera at the foot of the Alps, curving around the Baie des Anges where the Paillon reaches the Mediterranean, with Monaco and the Italian border just along the coast. Greeks from Marseille settled here and named it Nikaia, after the goddess of victory.

What sets Nice apart is how long it belonged elsewhere. From the fourteenth century it was a dominion of Savoy and then part of the Kingdom of Sardinia, and it only became French under Napoleon III. That Italian past still shapes the old town around the Palais Lascaris, a baroque palace in narrow lanes, and the ochre and red façades around Place Masséna. In the nineteenth century English visitors arrived to spend their winters here, giving the seafront promenade its name; Russian nobility wintered here too, and the Cathédrale orthodoxe russe de Saint-Nicolas recalls them. Later came painters, and the Musée Matisse and Musée Marc Chagall now sit on the hill of Cimiez.

So the city is a layered one: Savoyard lanes, painters' light on the hills and, at its feet, the long curve of the Baie des Anges glittering under the promenade.