Situated west of the town of
Antibes on the western slope of the ridge, halfway to the old fishery village of
Golfe-Juan (where
Napoleon landed in 1815), it had been an area with many
stone pine trees ( in French), where the inhabitants of Antibes used to go for a promenade, for a picnic in the shadow of the
stone pine trees or to collect tree branches and cones for their stoves. The village was given the name Juan-les-Pins on 12 March 1882. The spelling
Juan, used instead of the customary French spelling,
Jean, derives from the local
Occitan dialect. Other names discussed for the town include
Héliopolis,
Antibes-les-Pins and
Albany-les-Pins (after the
Duke of Albany, the fourth son of
Queen Victoria). The following year, 1883, it was decided to build a railway station in Juan-les-Pins on the
Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée (PLM) line that had been there since 1863. In 1926, the hotel Le Provençal was opened and received guests such as
Charlie Chaplin,
Lilian Harvey,
Jack L. Warner and
Man Ray. ==Jazz à Juan==