Trends come and go, but Nice has always been an international crowd-pleaser. Friederich Nietzche lived on the leafy rue Ségurane, right down the street from today’s new Palais Ségurane; Igor Stravinski happily holed up at the Hotel Negresco; only James Joyce, who stayed at a seafront Hotel Suisse suffering from eye problems and struggling with a draft of Finnigan’s Wake, complained about Nice when the weather turned stormy. Henri Matisse was more patient – after a month of rain, the Mistral chased the clouds away and he decided to stay for the rest of his life, dazzled by the crystalline clarity of the Mediterranean landscape.
“A certain blue enters your soul,” the artist rhapsodised. “A certain red has an effect on your blood pressure. And a century later, that hasn’t changed.
These days, France’s fifth largest city, recently anointed to World Heritage status, is on a roll. For starters, the mayor Christian Estrosi is avidly regreening the city with pedestrian walkways, planting hundreds of pines, olive and almond trees to the latest extension of La Coulée Verte (the "Green Flow"), a 1.3 kilometre park that cuts the city in two.
In June 2025, the city will be hosting the United Nations Ocean Conference, along with a venue of festive cultural events to celebrate the sea. Above all, the long-awaited hotel renaissance has arrived and is here to stay: gorgeously restored landmarks, walls ablaze with bold shades, rooms that dance with light and shadows, lemo.