The Old Town of Nice in the south of France is a pedestrian zone that's very historic
and especially lovely to walk through at night – the shops are open, the restaurants are
open, and people are out for a stroll.
Appreciate this intersection if you would for a moment.
Here we have three pedestrian lanes coming together: we have got Rue Droite, Rue Collet
and Rue Françoise all crashing together in his wonderful little spot surrounded by cafés
and shops and people.
The Old Town is perhaps the most interesting part of Nice, fascinating for its labyrinth
of narrow streets, picturesque and animated peoples and buildings, expressing something
Italian and their general character.
Now it's early evening, which is a magical time to be out strolling of course with the
twilight and the shop lights – very safe, very friendly – a lovely place to stroll.
And in the evening the Old Town is alive, the shops stay open especially in this tourist
area.
The shops are open till 9 PM, some of them even later.
Many of them do close in the afternoon for siesta, we are in the south of Europe and
they follow that traditional custom, so it might not be best to stroll here at 1 PM or
two or 3 o'clock, a lot of the stores are closed, but they'll be reopening at three
or 4 o'clock.
Rue du Collet is one of the main lanes of the old town.
It changes names a few times up ahead and it just wanderers, it meanders - it's not
quite straight, there's a little bit of a curve here and there.
You have got some cafés, you got tourist shops, you’ve got local shops and people
out walking, especially here at twilight - this is perfect.
As you walk along Rue du Collet you will soon arrive at this little intersection it's a
charming spot were three lanes come together.
It's called Place Central, and at this little Place it is a simple little affair - you got
a little restaurant that sells the socca and other Nicoise specialties.
You have got a café on the other side, there's a little food market here, you can buy some
gadgets and gizmos.
This fresh produce market is fun.
You can shop for some clothing, all in an arm's reach of this Place Central.
A few hundred years ago this was already a very old part of town and had become somewhat
rundown and dilapidated and it's really just in the past century it's come back to life
again.
So there's a beauty in this Old Town of just simply walking.
Now it's often overlooked for example in guidebooks or historical memoirs or even dismissed as
a place that's kind of dark and narrow and congested, but it really deserves to be front
and center when you come to visit Nice.
It's what makes the city so very special, along with the beachfront of course, the marvelous
white broad beach and the promenades down by the Mediterranean Sea.
The modern downtown certainly is lovely, you'll want to be sure to also visit that downtown
area, but these little back lanes are really something special.
And yes there are plenty of art galleries along the way.
You might even get a chance to meet the artist himself.
Usually they’re inside and maybe doing a little bit of painting.
It is like Streetside Museum of Contemporary Art.
This is art that's very much up to date - it was just created yesterday.
There are several especially picturesque intersections here in the Old Town where the lanes come
together and merge, with beautiful lighting at night.
And then as you keep walking along Rue du Collet it changes names and becomes Rue de
la Boucherie, the same street, and just keeps winding along as you pass more of these shops,
and notice they are open in the evening.
We’re walking at about 7:30 and there are plenty of people out.
This of course is a very safe neighborhood, it's a family kind of place.
On the opposite side of the old town, the east side, this pedestrian lane joins up with
the busy street which leads into Place Garibaldi in the newer part of town.
Like many cities in Europe, especially France, they have communal bike rental racks.
Place Garibaldi is another major square in Nice.
It's a transit hub, the tram goes through here.
There is a bus stop that will take you on to Monaco, about 30 minutes away.
This Place has recently been renovated, it is upgraded, it's looking beautiful.
And it's named after Garibaldi, who was born in Nice.
He was the great unifier of Italy, which used to own this territory until the end of the
19th century.
This neighborhood is quite lively because people live here.
Most of the upper floors in the Old Town are residential apartments with full-time residents
and that gives it a real home quality.
You see the life in the streets here is what modern major urban centers are trying to re-create,
trying to strive for - real streets with real people living out their daily lives, and it's
on a human scale because you don't have skyscrapers, you don't have massive structures all around.
It is people and their homes and the shops down below, with a steady stream of visitors
and locals walking on into the evening.
We're going to take you on an extended evening walk through the Old Town at the end of the
program.
But for now we're taking you to an evening viewpoint to watch the sunset along the shore,
and then up to the top of Castle Hill for a spectacular view looking down over the town.
To get this view you walk along the east end of the waterfront promenade on the Quais des
Etats Unit, and to the end you'll have this rocky outcrop with a terrace, with a commanding
view looking back along the pebbly beach of Nice.
The view gets even more spectacular when you go up to the top of Castle Hill, or as they
call it the Château.
Here's a quick view from Google Earth showing how the hill of the castle towers over the
Old Town of Nice and the city beyond.
The easiest way to get up to the top of this hill is take the elevator.
You pay a small fee, it's about €1, and it's well worth it, otherwise you've got to
walk up a huge staircase.
It's the equivalent of going up over 100 meters high, so it's really way up in the sky.
You don't want to walk it if you can avoid it, so take the elevator.
It's quick, it's simple, especially late in the day like – this there is no crowd, there's
no line and you come out on top and start enjoying the view.
And right away you're looking down on the Old Town and the Cours Saleya.
There's all the booths getting ready for the next morning's market.
There is a map posted to help you find your way, to locate viewpoints on both sides.
But it can be a little confusing, there's no signs on the paths.
You want to go up this unmarked staircase, don't go straight on the main lane because
that does not bring you to the top.
And you can walk up a little higher.
This little small child can make it.
Oh it's a big climb for this little girl so that shows you can do it, no problem.
So keep walking when you get up to the top.
They even have a waterfall, it is an artificial waterfall that was put here in the 1830s to
help attract the tourist nobility from England and the rest of France to come on down and
visit Nice.
The shoreline view gets even better as the night lights come on.
While you're up on the hill enjoying the town view be sure to walk to the other side of
the hill for the harbor view.
And there's a beautiful green park in-between.
Looking down from the other side of the hill you see the small boat harbor called Port
Lympia, and in the distance, Cape Denise.
It's believed this Castle Hill was the site of some of the earliest settlements in the
area.
They lived up here for self-defense.
In very early times the Ligurians, who were the first inhabitants of Nice had their dwellings
upon the rock of the castle, and later it's probable that the earliest Greek settlers
lived there.
But as times became more settled they began spreading down onto the plain and the old
hilltown became a mere fortress to be used in time of need.
And a fortress it remained, developing as centuries followed each other into a great
and impregnable castle.
Another way to get up here and back down is on the tourist tram.
If you have the patience or the proper timing to stick around for the late sunset it reaches
the visual peak.
This is really grand with the lights blazing down below, the golden sunset off in the horizon.
This makes for one of those travel events that you will just never forget.
And when you're done you can take that same elevator ride back down again, timing it so
that you get down before the elevator shuts for the evening.
Or you could walk down, it's not as hard as walking up, but so much easier to just simply
ride the elevator.
Now we're going to take you on a walk through the Old Town of Nice at night.
It's a very special time to be here.
Shops are still up on until 8:30-9:00 o'clock, depending on the season.
Restaurants and bars, cafés of course go well into the night.
There's always lots of people around so it's a friendly and interesting place to roam.
This Old Town is so attractive that just seeing it during the daytime, which you've probably
already done, is not enough.
You want to come back and enjoy it once again at night when it looks like a different place
with this special twilight ambience.
Depending on the season it might be this dark at 6 PM in the winter for example or at 9:30
in the summertime.
Either way that period just after twilight is the most magical time to be out.
You've still got a little bit of lingering ambient light in the sky, and the shop windows
are on, the street lights are on, and it's very lively.
Walking through these narrow, dark lanes illuminated by shop lights and livened by people passing
by makes you feel like you're in one of the dream places of the earth.
You have to give Nice time and get out of your rut before you awaken to its unique characteristics.
And then if you detach yourselves from the amusement seekers, the time killers, the apathetic,
the bored and the blasé tourists you begin to realize that the metropolis of the Riviera
is a world in itself – a reservoir for exploration and reflection.
Nice is the largest city along the Côte d'Azur, and with a population of about 1 million it's
the second largest French city along the shores of the Mediterranean after Marseille.
It makes an ideal home base for seeing all of the sites along the coast.
It is one of the most beautiful places and offers a large number of hotels and restaurants
in all price ranges.
Nice is centrally located with excellent rail and bus services that connect all of the towns
along this coastline.
And as we are walking along through the lanes there is not really a lot to describe - it's
mostly interesting visuals of seeing the shops and the people, the old buildings, the architecture,
and it does bring to mind the very old history of Nice, so as we walk along, I let me just
reflect a little bit and tell you some about the very long history of the city in the south
of France – 3000 years of history boiled down to 3 minutes.
Several hundred years ago nearly the entire population lived in the Old Town – that
really was the entire city.
There were a few people living up on the hill and a few around the bend over by the harbor,
a few houses scattered of course up hillsides in the interior, but one can imagine that
at least 90% of the population was clustered right here in what is now the old town.
So the history of Nice, you can imagine, is very long and tangled up with a lot of warfare
and a lot of different tribes of people coming through because Nice has always been on a
frontier.
Even today it's very much close to the borders of Italy, and being on the Mediterranean it's
really a frontier with the north coast of Africa as well.
And this has always been the case, for thousands of years it's been a crossroads.
The Riviera first enters into the actual historical period about six centuries before the birth
of Christ, with a group called the Phoeceians , who came ultimately from Greece.
They were living along the shores of the Mediterranean and were battling with the Persians, and ended
up over in this part of what is now the Riviera.
These early Greek settlers were often harassed by the native Ligurian tribes and so these
Phoeceians appealed to ancient Rome to intervene and help them out - and this was in 154 BC
- and this is what brought Rome into the picture and they stayed and occupied the area for
the next 500 years.
And the Mediterranean coast was declared a Roman province which occurred in the reign
of Augustus about 2000 years ago.
By about the 4th century A.D.
with the decline of the Roman Empire, Christianity became pretty well-established and then by
the early Middle Ages the Nice area attained some commercial importance.
The French Revolution of 1789 affected Nice for a variety of reasons and ended up by making
it part of France, which it remained until it then detached from France in 1814.
At that time Nice was once more united to the fortunes of the House of Savoy, a royal
family based in northern Italy, bringing a strong Italian influence to the area.
And so it remained for close to half a century, when further political developments brought
about its return to France, under Napoleon III.
It's Been French Ever since.
At the same time, in 1860, construction of the railroad was completed and the beginnings
of the tourism boom started.
Travelers could now arrive easily from all over Europe and Nice took off as one of the
great centers of tourism.
We have created many more movies about this area, the Côte d'Azur or the French Riviera,
that you can find on our channel so have a look.
You'll see programs about Cannes and Monaco, Monte Carlo, St-Paul, Vence, Villefrance,
all around through the region including Antibes and we really enjoy using Nice as our home
base to explore this entire region.