Nice in 3 days

The red-ochre Villa des Arènes, a 17th-century Genoese house with trompe-l'œil window frames, stands in the Cimiez olive grove above Nice. It became the Musée Matisse in 1963, after Matisse's widow and heirs donated the core of the collection. Matisse lived in Nice from 1917 until he died in 1954, mostly at the Hôtel Régina just down the boulevard. The collection covers his whole career. Look for the early Still Life with Books (1890), Odalisque paintings from the Nice years, and the late cut-outs, including Blue Nude IV (1952) and the huge Flowers and Fruit. There are also studies for the Chapelle du Rosaire in Vence, plus Matisse's own furniture, vases and fabrics that you can spot in his paintings. The architect Jean-François Bodin designed the underground extension, which opened in 1993 and links the villa to the sunken garden. Opening hours are 10:00–18:00 from 21 June to 31 October and 10:00–17:00 the rest of the year. The museum is closed on Tuesdays and on 1 January, Easter Sunday, 1 May and 25 December. A municipal museum pass costs €15 for 24 hours or €30 for 7 days and covers Nice's city museums. Entry is free for under-18s and students. Take bus 5 or 33 to the Arènes/Musée Matisse stop. Around the museum you'll find the Gallo-Roman arena and baths at the Musée d'Archéologie, plus the free Franciscan monastery garden, which looks out over the Paillon valley to the sea. Cafés are scarce up here, so buy a pan bagnat or socca in the Old Town and picnic under the olive trees. Insider tip: after your visit, walk five minutes to the Cimiez monastery cemetery, where Matisse is buried in a simple grave on the upper terrace. Go early in the morning, when the olive grove is quiet and the tour groups haven't arrived yet.

Marc Chagall worked closely on this museum's design, and it opened on 7 July 1973, his 86th birthday. It was the first French national museum devoted to a living artist. The architect André Hermant designed a low, light-filled pavilion of pale stone, set in a Mediterranean garden of olive trees, cypress, lavender and agapanthus. At its heart are the 17 large canvases of the Biblical Message. Twelve rooms-worth of Genesis and Exodus scenes hang in the main hall. Five paintings of the Song of Songs, all in glowing reds, fill a smaller hexagonal room next door. In the concert hall, Chagall's three blue stained-glass windows of the Creation of the World colour the whole space. Outside, a large mosaic of the Prophet Elijah is reflected in a shallow pool. From May to October it opens 10:00–18:00, and from November to April 10:00–17:00. It is closed on Tuesdays, 1 January, 1 May and 25 December. Full admission is €10 (€8 reduced), a little more during temporary exhibitions. Entry is free on the first Sunday of each month and for EU residents under 26. As a national museum, it is not covered by the city's Nice museum pass. The museum sits at the foot of Cimiez, Nice's quiet residential hill of Belle Époque villas. It is about a 15-minute uphill walk from Nice-Ville station, or take bus 5 to the Musée Chagall stop. The garden café serves simple lunches and coffee under the trees. Insider tip: go in mid-afternoon, when the sun is lower and the Creation windows are at their most intense, and check the programme for chamber concerts in the auditorium. Afterwards, carry on uphill to the Matisse Museum, the Roman ruins of Cemenelum and the monastery rose garden. Chagall's great contemporary Matisse is buried in the cemetery next door.

Few buildings in Nice feel as far from home as the St Nicholas Russian Orthodox Cathedral. It was consecrated in 1912 and designed by the Russian architect Mikhail Preobrazhensky. Empress Maria Feodorovna backed the project for the large Russian colony that wintered on the Riviera. The church is also a memorial to Tsarevich Nicholas Alexandrovich, who died in Nice in 1865. Five onion domes in green, gold and blue tile sit above walls of pink Italian brick and grey Calabrian marble. It is often called the largest Russian Orthodox church in Western Europe. Inside, look for the carved iconostasis and the dense rows of icons and frescoes, which are dim, gilded and heavy with incense. It is still a working parish, owned by the Russian state since a 2013 court ruling. Cover your shoulders and knees, and keep quiet near worshippers. Photography inside may be restricted. Hours have usually been about 09:00–18:00 from Monday to Saturday, with a midday break, and afternoons only on Sunday after the liturgy. Entry is free or a few euros (around €3–5). Both change often, so check the parish website before you go. Insider tip: walk past the cathedral through the garden to the small Tsarevich Chapel. It stands on the site of Villa Bermond, where Nicholas died, and most visitors miss it. The cathedral is in the quiet Parc Impérial district, about ten minutes on foot from Nice-Ville station, among Belle Époque villas far from the Promenade crowds. Afterwards, walk north to the Libération market for socca, pan bagnat and Niçoise produce in the morning.

Cours Saleya has held a market since the 19th century, and its flower market has been running since 1897. It sits between Vieux Nice and the Quai des États-Unis, with a row of low ochre houses that once blocked the sea from view. The best-known of them is 1 Place Charles-Félix at the eastern end, where Henri Matisse lived and painted from 1921 to 1938. Halfway along stands the Chapelle de la Miséricorde, a Baroque chapel built to plans by the Piedmontese architect Bernardo Vittone and finished in the 1740s. The flower and produce stalls run Tuesday to Saturday, 6:00 to 17:30, and Sunday until 13:30. On Mondays an antiques market takes over from about 7:00 to 18:00. Once the stalls are packed away, the terraces spread across the square and aperitif time starts around 18:00. Pissaladière is Nice's answer to pizza: a thick, bread-like base topped with onions cooked slowly until sweet, black Niçoise olives and anchovies. The name comes from pissalat, a fermented anchovy paste that used to be spread on the tart. A slice costs about €3–5 from a bakery and €8–12 on a terrace. Pastis costs €4–7 a glass. Pour in five parts cold water, then add ice, so the drink doesn't turn cloudy too fast. Add a plate of socca, a thin chickpea pancake, for about €4, and you have the classic Niçois aperitif. Insider tip: skip the menus near the square and buy your pissaladière and socca in the alleys just behind it, where they come out of wood-fired ovens. Chez Thérésa's socca stall in the morning market is a local favourite. Then take your drink to a terrace at the quieter eastern end near the Miséricorde chapel, where evening light falls on the yellow house fronts. From there it's a two-minute walk to the Colline du Château staircase for sunset over the Baie des Anges.

Perched 429 m above the sea, Èze is a medieval eagle's nest of vaulted lanes and stone houses. Its walls date mostly from the 12th–14th centuries, when the House of Savoy fortified the village. Louis XIV's troops razed the castle in 1706. On its ruins, mayor André Gianton and Jean Gastaud, the landscaper behind Monaco's cactus garden, created the Jardin Exotique in 1949. The garden is terraced with agaves, aloes and earth-goddess sculptures by Jean-Philippe Richard. From the summit viewing table you can see from Cap Ferrat to Saint-Tropez, and to Corsica on crisp winter mornings. It opens daily from 9:00, closing around 16:30 in winter and 19:00 in summer. Adult tickets cost about €8. Below the garden, the Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption church was rebuilt from 1764 to 1772 to plans by Antoine Spinelli, with a Baroque interior that feels surprisingly grand for such a small village. Nearby, the Chapelle des Pénitents Blancs dates from 1306. The Fragonard perfume factory by the main road offers free guided tours. For lunch, the terrace at Château Eza gives you the view without the two-star prices of La Chèvre d'Or. In summer, a socca-style snack or lemon sorbet from a lane-side stall works too. The Chemin de Nietzsche climbs about 400 m from Èze-sur-Mer station through pine and scrub. Friedrich Nietzsche worked out part three of Thus Spoke Zarathustra on this path in the winter of 1883–84. Insider tip: take the TER train from Nice (10 minutes) and start the one-hour climb before 9:00, while the slope is still in shade. Then ride Lignes d'Azur bus 82 or 602 back to Nice. Arrive after 17:00 and the tour groups have left, and the lanes are quiet.

Thirty minutes from Nice by TER train (about €4.50 one way, departures roughly every 20–30 minutes), Monaco hands you one of motorsport's most famous circuits as an ordinary city walk. The Automobile Club de Monaco held the first Grand Prix in 1929, organised by Antony Noghès, and the 3.337 km layout has barely changed since. Outside race weeks these are public roads, so you can walk the whole lap in about an hour. Start at Sainte-Dévote, the tight right-hander just below the station, then climb Avenue d'Ostende and Boulevard des Moulins toward Casino Square. The sharpness of that climb is something TV never shows. The Casino de Monte-Carlo opened in 1863, and Charles Garnier, architect of the Paris Opéra, designed its 1878–79 hall. The atrium is free to enter. Visitors can tour the gaming rooms from 10:00 to 13:00, and play starts from 14:00. Entry costs €20, you must be 18 or over and you need photo ID. From there, go down through Mirabeau to the Fairmont hairpin, the slowest corner in Formula 1. Next comes the tunnel, where drivers go from glare to shadow at nearly 290 km/h. You come out at the harbour chicane, with superyachts moored along the Tabac and Piscine sections, and finish round La Rascasse. For lunch, skip the terrace at Café de Paris. Head instead to the Marché de la Condamine for barbajuans, fried Monégasque pastries filled with chard and ricotta, and socca straight from the stalls. Afterwards, climb the Rampe Major to Monaco-Ville on the Rock. The Changing of the Guard takes place at the Prince's Palace every day at 11:55. Insider tip: walk the lap in the direction of the race, and do it early on a weekday morning, before tour coaches crowd Casino Square. In late April and May the grandstands and barriers go up, so check the race calendar before you plan your visit.

Perched on the narrow neck of the Cap Ferrat peninsula, Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild was built between 1905 and 1912 for Baroness Béatrice Ephrussi de Rothschild. Architect Aaron Messiah designed the pink Venetian-style palazzo, but the baroness directed every change and had full-scale mock-ups built before she approved them. She left it to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1934. Inside you'll find 18th-century French furniture, Sèvres porcelain, Fragonard drawings and rare Asian textiles. Most visitors, though, come for the nine themed gardens: French, Spanish, Florentine, Japanese, exotic, stone, Provençal, rose and Sèvres. They sit on a ridge above two bays, Villefranche on one side and Beaulieu on the other. The main French garden was laid out to look like a ship's deck, with a small Temple of Love at the far end. Its fountains "dance" to classical music about every 20 minutes. From February to October the villa is usually open daily 10:00–18:00, and until 19:00 in July and August. From November to January it opens 14:00–18:00 on weekdays and 10:00–18:00 at weekends and during school holidays. Adult tickets cost about €18 and reduced tickets about €14, but check current hours and prices before you go. The tea room serves light lunches, cakes and tea on a terrace overlooking Villefranche Bay. Insider tip: come at opening time or after 16:00, when the tour groups have left and the low sun warms the pink facade. Take bus 15 from Nice rather than driving, because parking is very limited. Afterwards, walk the coastal path around Pointe Saint-Hospice, or go down to Plage de Passable for a swim.

Nice's farewell meal is the pan bagnat, the "bathed bread" of the Niçois working class. It is a round wholemeal bun rubbed with garlic and soaked in olive oil, then filled with tuna or anchovies, raw tomato, radish, green pepper, spring onion, hard-boiled egg, basil and little black Niçoise olives. Purists will tell you it never contains mayonnaise or cooked vegetables. Buy one at a take-away around Cours Saleya, where the covered flower and produce market runs Tuesday to Sunday from about 6:00 until 13:30. Expect to pay €6–9. Ask for one made that morning and left to rest, because the bread should be soaked through but not falling apart. From Cours Saleya, walk east around the foot of Castle Hill by the Rauba Capeù headland, the "hat thief" corner named for its gusts of wind. After 15 minutes you reach Port Lympia, the Vieux-Port. Work on the port began in 1749 under Charles Emmanuel III of Savoy, when Nice still belonged to the Kingdom of Sardinia. Its quays are lined with ochre and red Genoese-style houses, and the neoclassical church of Notre-Dame-du-Port looks down over the water. Painted wooden pointus, the traditional fishing boats, are moored alongside superyachts and the ferries to Corsica. Nice restricts drinking in public places in parts of the city, so skip the bottle on the harbour wall. Sit on a terrace along Quai Lunel or Quai des Docks instead, where a glass of Côtes de Provence rosé costs €6–10. Most terraces serve from late morning until around midnight. Insider tip: ask whether they have Bellet. It's Nice's own tiny wine appellation, grown in the hills above the city, and its rosé is made mainly from the local braquet grape. It rarely leaves the area, so this is a good chance to try it. Come in the hour before sunset, when the light turns the house fronts gold. Tram line 2 stops at Port Lympia when it's time to head for the airport.