From prehistory to the Bronze Age The region of the French Riviera has been inhabited since
prehistoric times. Primitive tools dating to between 1,000,000 and 1,050,000 years ago were discovered in the
Grotte du Vallonnet, near
Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, with stones and bones of animals, including bovines, rhinoceros, and bison. At
Terra Amata (380,000 to 230,000 years ago), near the
Nice Port, a fireplace was discovered that is one of the oldest found in Europe. Stone
dolmens, monuments from the
Bronze Age, can be found near
Draguignan, while the Valley of Marvels (
Vallée des Merveilles) near
Mount Bégo, at elevation, is presumed to have been an outdoor religious sanctuary, having over 40,000 drawings of people and animals, dated to about 2000 BC.
Greek influence Beginning in the 7th century BC,
Greek sailors from
Phocaea in
Asia Minor began to visit and then build
emporia along the Côte d'Azur. Emporia were started at Olbia (
Hyères); Antipolis (
Antibes) and Nikaia (Nice). These settlements, which traded with the inhabitants of the interior, became rivals of the
Etruscans and
Phoenicians, who also visited the Côte d'Azur.
Roman colonization In 8 BC, the Emperor
Augustus built an imposing trophy monument at
La Turbie (the
Trophy of the Alps or Trophy of Augustus) to mark the pacification of the region. Roman towns, monuments and
amphitheatres were built along the Côte d'Azur and many still survive, such as the amphitheatre and
baths at
Cimiez, above Nice, and the amphitheatre, Roman walls and other remains at
Fréjus. , which is still in use
Barbarians and Christians Roman
Provence reached the height of its power and prosperity during the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD. In the mid-3rd century,
Germanic peoples began to invade the region, and Roman power weakened. In the same period, Christianity started to become a powerful force in the region. The first
cathedrals were built in the 4th century, and
bishoprics were established: in Fréjus at the end of the 4th century, Cimiez and
Vence in 439, and Antibes in 442. The oldest Christian structure still in existence on the Côte d'Azur is the baptistery of
Fréjus Cathedral, built at the end of the 5th century, which also saw the founding of the first
monastery in the region,
Lerins Monastery on an island off the coast at Cannes. The fall of the
Western Roman Empire in the first half of the 5th century was followed by invasions of Provence by the
Visigoths, the
Burgundians and the
Ostrogoths. There was then a long period of wars and dynastic quarrels, which in turn led to further invasions by the
Saracens and the
Normans in the 9th century.
The Counts of Provence and the House of Grimaldi Some peace was restored to the coast by the establishment in 879 of a
new kingdom of Provence, ruled first by the
Bosonids dynasty (879–1112), then by the
Catalans (1112–1246), and finally by the Angevins (1246–1382,
elder branch, 1382–1483 (
younger branch). , near Saint-Tropez In the 13th century, another powerful political force appeared, the
House of Grimaldi. Descended from a Genoese nobleman expelled from Genoa by his rivals in 1271, members of the different branches of the Grimaldis took power in
Monaco, Antibes and Nice, and built castles at
Grimaud,
Cagnes-sur-Mer and
Antibes.
Albert II, the current
Prince of Monaco, is a descendant of the Grimaldis. In 1388, the city of Nice and its surrounding territory, from the mouth of the Var to the Italian border, were separated from Provence and came under the protection of the
House of Savoy. The territory was called the
Comté de Nice after 1526, and thereafter its language, history and culture were separate from those of Provence until 1860, when it was re-attached to France under
Napoleon III. Provence retained its formal independence until 1480, when the last
Comte de Provence,
René I of Naples, died and left the Comté to his nephew,
Charles du Maine, who in turn left it to
Louis XI of France. In 1486, Provence formally became part of France.
Popularity with the British upper class in 18th and 19th centuries Until the end of the 18th century, the area later known as the Côte d'Azur was a remote and impoverished region, known mostly for fishing,
olive groves and the production of flowers for
perfume (manufactured in
Grasse). A new phase began when the coast became a fashionable health resort for the British upper class in the late 18th century. The first British traveller to describe its benefits was the novelist
Tobias Smollett, who visited
Nice in 1763 when it was still an Italian city within the Kingdom of Sardinia. Smollett brought Nice and its warm winter climate to the attention of the British aristocracy with
Travels through France and Italy, written in 1765. At about the same time, a Scottish doctor,
John Brown, became famous for prescribing what he called climato-therapy, a change in climate, to cure a variety of diseases including
tuberculosis, known then as consumption. The French historian Paul Gonnet wrote that, as a result, Nice was filled with "a colony of pale and listless English women and listless sons of nobility near death". In 1834, a British nobleman and politician named
Henry Peter Brougham, First Baron Brougham and Vaux, who had played an important part in the abolition of the slave trade, travelled with his unwell daughter to the south of France, intending to go to Italy. A cholera epidemic in Italy forced him to stop at
Cannes, where he enjoyed the climate and scenery so much that he bought land and built a villa. He began to spend his winters there and, owing to his fame, others followed: Cannes soon had a small British
enclave.
Robert Louis Stevenson was a later British visitor who came for his health. In 1882 he rented a villa called La Solitude at
Hyères, where he wrote much of ''
A Child's Garden of Verses''.
Railway, gambling and royalty In 1864, six years after Nice became part of France following the
Second Italian War of Independence the first railway was completed, making Nice and the Riviera accessible to visitors from all over Europe. One hundred thousand visitors arrived in 1865. By 1874, residents of foreign enclaves in Nice, most of whom were British, numbered 25,000. in Cap-Saint-Jean-Ferrat was built in 1905–1912 by
Beatrice de Rothschild, of the
Rothschild family. In the mid-19th century, British and French entrepreneurs began to see the potential of promoting tourism along the Côte d'Azur. At the time, gambling was illegal in France and Italy. In 1856, the Prince of
Monaco,
Charles III, began constructing a
casino in Monaco, which was called a health
spa to avoid criticism by the church. The casino was a failure, but in 1863 the Prince signed an agreement with
François Blanc, a French businessman already operating a successful casino at
Baden-Baden (southwestern Germany), to build a resort and new casino. Blanc arranged for
steamships and carriages to take visitors from Nice to Monaco, and built hotels, gardens and a casino in a place called Spélugues. At the suggestion of his mother,
Princess Caroline, Charles III renamed the place
Monte Carlo after himself. When the railway reached Monte Carlo in 1870, many thousands of visitors began to arrive and the population of the principality of Monaco doubled. The French Riviera soon became a popular destination for European royalty. Just days after the railway reached Nice in 1864, Tsar
Alexander II of Russia visited on a private train, followed soon afterwards by
Napoleon III and then
Leopold II, the King of the Belgians.
Queen Victoria was a frequent visitor. In 1882 she stayed in
Menton, and in 1891 spent several weeks at the Grand Hotel at
Grasse. In 1892 she stayed at the Hotel Cost-belle in
Hyères. In successive years from 1895 to 1899 she stayed in
Cimiez in the hills above Nice. First, in 1895 and 1896, she patronised the Grand Hôtel, while in later years she and her staff took over the entire west wing of the Excelsior Hôtel Régina, which had been designed with her needs specifically in mind (part of which later became the home and studio of the renowned artist
Henri Matisse). She travelled with an entourage of between sixty and a hundred, including chef, ladies in waiting, dentist, Indian servants, her own bed and her own food. The
Prince of Wales was a regular visitor to Cannes, starting in 1872. He frequented the Club Nautique, a private club on the
Croisette, the fashionable seafront boulevard of Cannes. He visited there each spring for a two-month period, observing yacht races from shore while the royal yacht,
Britannia, was sailed by professional crewmen. After he became King in 1901, he never again visited the French Riviera. By the end of the 19th century the Côte d'Azur began to attract artistic painters, who appreciated the climate, the bright colors and clear light. Among them were
Auguste Renoir, who settled in
Cagnes-sur-Mer and in
Mougins,
Henri Matisse and
Pablo Picasso.
Inter-war period, American visitors and decline of the aristocracy The
First World War brought down many of the royal houses of Europe and altered the nature and the calendar of the French Riviera. Following the war, greater numbers of Americans began arriving, with business moguls and celebrities eventually outnumbering aristocrats. The 'High Society' scene moved from a winter season to a summer season. Americans began coming to the south of France in the 19th century.
Henry James set part of his novel
The Ambassadors on the Riviera.
James Gordon Bennett Jr., the son and heir of the founder of the
New York Herald, had a villa in
Beaulieu. Industrialist
John Pierpont Morgan gambled at Monte Carlo and bought 18th-century paintings by
Fragonard in Grasse – shipping them to the
Metropolitan Museum in New York. A feature of the French Riviera in the inter-war years was the
Train Bleu, an all first-class sleeper train which brought wealthy passengers down from
Calais. It made its first trip in 1922, and carried
Winston Churchill,
Somerset Maugham, and the future King
Edward VIII over the years. While Europe was still recovering from the war and the
American dollar was strong, American writers and artists started arriving on the Côte d'Azur.
Edith Wharton wrote
The Age of Innocence (1920) at a villa near
Hyères, winning the Pulitzer Prize for the novel (the first woman to do so). Dancer
Isadora Duncan frequented Cannes and Nice, but died in 1927 when her scarf caught in a wheel of the
Amilcar motor car in which she was a passenger and strangled her. The writer
F. Scott Fitzgerald first visited with his wife Zelda in 1924, stopping at Hyères,
Cannes and
Monte Carlo – eventually staying at
Saint-Raphaël, where he wrote much of
The Great Gatsby and began
Tender Is the Night. While Americans were largely responsible for making summer the high season, a French fashion designer,
Coco Chanel, made sunbathing fashionable. She acquired a striking tan during the summer of 1923, and tans then became the fashion in Paris. During the
abdication crisis of the
British Monarchy in 1936,
Wallis Simpson, the intended bride of
King Edward VIII, was staying at the Villa Lou Viei in Cannes, talking with the King by telephone each day. After his abdication, the
Duke of Windsor (as he became) and his new wife stayed at the
Villa La Croë on the
Cap d'Antibes. The English playwright and novelist
Somerset Maugham also became a resident in 1926, buying the
Villa La Mauresque toward the tip of
Cap Ferrat, near Nice.
Second World War When
Germany invaded France in June 1940, the remaining British colony was evacuated to
Gibraltar and eventually to Britain. American Jewish groups helped some of the Jewish artists living in the south of France, such as
Marc Chagall, to escape to the United States. In August 1942, 600 Jews from Nice were rounded up by French police and sent to
Drancy, and eventually to
death camps. In all about 5,000 French Jews from Nice perished during the war. Following
D-Day in Normandy,
Operation Dragoon (initially Operation Anvil), the code name for the Allied invasion of Southern France, commenced on 15 August 1944, when American parachute troops landed near Fréjus, and a fleet landed 60,000 troops of the
American Seventh Army and
French First Army between
Cavalaire and
Agay, east of
Saint-Raphaël. German resistance was not as fanatical as
Hitler and the
High Command had ordered, and crumbled in days. Saint-Tropez was badly damaged by German mines at the time of the liberation. The novelist
Colette organized an effort to assure the town was rebuilt in its original style. When the war ended, artists Marc Chagall and Pablo Picasso returned to live and work.
Post-war period and late 20th century The
Cannes Film Festival was launched in September 1946, marking the return of
French cinema to world screens. The
Festival Palace was built in 1949 on the site of the old Cercle Nautique, where the Prince of Wales had met his mistresses in the late 19th century. The release of the French film
Et Dieu… créa la femme (
And God Created Woman) in November 1956 was a major event for the Riviera, making an international star of
Brigitte Bardot, and making an international tourist destination of Saint-Tropez, particularly for the new class of wealthy international travellers called the
jet set. The marriage of American film actress
Grace Kelly to
Prince Rainier of Monaco on 18 April 1956, attracted world attention once again. It was viewed on television by 30 million people. During the 1960s, the Mayor of Nice,
Jacques Médecin, decided to reduce the dependence of the Riviera on ordinary tourism, and to make it a destination for international congresses and conventions. He built the
Palais des Congrès at the Acropolis in Nice, and founded a
Chagall Museum and a
Matisse Museum at
Cimiez. At the end of August 1997,
Princess Diana and
Dodi Fayed spent their last days together on his father's yacht off
Pampelonne Beach near
Saint-Tropez, shortly before they died in the
Alma Tunnel in Paris. == Geography ==