Before they became legends, Cannes and the Côte d'Azur simply offered untamed nature. Then, in the 1920's, the idyllic american couple, Sara and Gerald Murphy, together with illustrious authors such as Francis Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, and dancer Isadora Duncan, unveiled this land where summer never ends.
These flamboyant personalities roused such awe among their compatriots with their tales of Mediterranean holiday-making that they triggered real migration on the part of high society. Seaside tourism on the French Riviera, which had already appeared in the mid-19th century, would thus never cease to grow, first in winter, then in summer.
It should be said that Cannes and the Côte d’Azur benefited from an exceptional natural heritage, successfully transformed into iconic imagery: sumptuous sites and scenery, picturesque towns and villages, red rock mountains falling into the deep blue sea, endless sunshine, exuberant vegetation, colours and fragrances, warmth and softness; all then joined by luxury and la dolce vita.
Beautiful, radiant, lulled by the chirping of cicadas and the lapping of waves, the French Riviera became the muse of artists, an ambassador for the New Wave, the rallying point of stars and jet-setters. A timeless Riviera at the gateway to Provence, whose colours, fragrances and flavours set heads spinning… A Côte d’Azur hiding in the wings, where its most precious treasures were stashed away. A Côte d’Azur of incomparable light, making each landscape sublime, and enthralling many artists, from Seurat and Cézanne to Matisse and Chagall, via Braque and Picasso.
From the famous Principality of Monaco to Nice's Bay of Angels, then on to Menton, adored by Jean Cocteau, Saint-Paul-de-Vence, renowned for its Maeght Foundation and art-galleries, Juan-les-Pins and its historic jazz festival, Grasse with its wafting perfumes, Cannes and its Film Festival, Aix-en-Provence, Marseille with its splendid creeks and the hills of Marcel Pagnol, and finally, of course, the paradise of Saint-Tropez…
The French Riviera, a source of fascination that constantly reinvents itself.
Associated places
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