Nice: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
Nice was Nizza, a city of the House of Savoy, for four hundred and fifty years. In 1860 Cavour handed it to France as payment for French help in unifying Italy, and a referendum approved the transfer by 25,743 votes to 160 — a result nobody has ever quite believed. Garibaldi, who was born here, called it a crime. The old town still looks and cooks Italian, the dialect is closer to Genoese than to French, and the ochre walls are not a French colour. Two hours, flat, and the lanes are narrow.
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A short history of Nice
In the 4th century BC Greeks from Massalia founded Nikaia on the coast. In 1388 the city passed to the Duchy of Savoy and remained in its hands for centuries. Giuseppe Garibaldi was born here in 1807. In 1860, under the Treaty of Turin, Nice was annexed to France. In the 19th century English aristocrats began to spend the winter here, and the promenade they built along the shore is still called the "Promenade des Anglais". On 14 July 2016 a terrorist drove a lorry into the crowds celebrating on the promenade and killed 86 people. In 2021 Nice was declared a World Heritage Site as a winter resort town.
The ten best sights in Nice
1Musée Matisse€10, in a red villa in an olive grove, and he is buried below it
2Musée Marc Chagall€10, and he designed the building around his own 17 canvases
3MAMACFree, and the roof terrace is the best free view in Nice
4Musée des Beaux-Arts€10, in a Russian princess’s villa from 1878
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5Musée Masséna
€10, a belle époque villa on the promenade, and the garden is free
6Palais LascarisFree, a 17th-century baroque palace, and 500 instruments in it
7Cathédrale Saint-Nicolas€5, the largest Russian Orthodox church outside Russia
8Sainte-RéparateFree, and the saint arrived in a boat towed by angels
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9Arènes de Cimiez
Free, a Roman amphitheatre, and the jazz festival is held in it
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10Musée archéologique
€5, the Roman baths of Cemenelum, and they are enormous
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What is an audio walk?
Tours in Nice →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Nice:
Free walking tours in Nice
Italian until 1860
Nice was Nizza, a city of the House of Savoy, for four hundred and fifty years. In 1860 Cavour handed it to France as payment for French help in unifying Italy, and a referendum approved the transfer by 25,743 votes to 160 — a result nobody has ever quite believed. Garibaldi, who was born here, called it a crime. The old town still looks and cooks Italian, the dialect is closer to Genoese than to French, and the ochre walls are not a French colour. Two hours, flat, and the lanes are narrow.
- Place Garibaldi · Giuseppe Garibaldi was born three hundred metres from this square in 1807, when Nice was Italian, and he spent the rest of his life unifying the country that had just given his birthplace away. His statue stands here looking south, and the square was laid out by the Savoyards as the gateway to Turin.
- Vieux Nice · The lanes are two to three metres wide and the buildings five storeys, so the sun reaches the ground for about an hour a day — a Ligurian pattern, not a Provençal one. The shutters are painted in ochre, oxblood and dark green because Savoy regulated the colours by decree.
- Place Rossetti · The one square in the old town with any width to it, and a fountain in the middle that the city turned off for years because of noise complaints from the flats above. Fenocchio on the corner has been making ice cream since 1966 and lists ninety-four flavours, including tomato and basil.
- Sainte-Réparate · The patron saint of Nice was a fifteen-year-old girl martyred in Caesarea in 250 AD, whose body — the story goes — drifted across the Mediterranean in a boat towed by two angels and came ashore here. The bay in front is still called the Bay of Angels for it.
- Palais Lascaris · A Genoese-baroque palace from the 1640s that was divided into forty-four slum flats by the nineteenth century and was being used as a tenement when the city bought it in 1942. The painted ceilings had survived under whitewash, and it now holds five hundred musical instruments.
- Cours Saleya · Flowers six days a week, antiques on Mondays, and the socca stalls at one end. Socca is a flat pancake of chickpea flour baked on a copper disc in a wood oven — it is Genoese, it is eaten standing with pepper and no fork, and it is the thing to eat here.
The light they came for
Matisse arrived in 1917 for a month, got pneumonia, stayed in a hotel on the promenade and wrote that the light was so soft and tender that he decided not to leave. He stayed thirty-seven years. Chagall came in 1949, Picasso was along the coast, Dufy and Bonnard too. None of them was painting the scenery; they were painting what the light did to colour, which is a different thing and is why the pictures look the way they do. Two hours, and the hill needs a bus.
- Musée Marc Chagall · Chagall gave the state seventeen canvases on the book of Genesis and Exodus on condition a building be made for them, and then worked on the design himself — the walls were sized to the paintings rather than the other way round. He was alive when it opened in 1973 and attended.
- Musée Matisse · A seventeenth-century Genoese villa painted deep red, holding the work Matisse kept for himself. The late cut-outs are here — he made them from his bed after surgery left him unable to stand at an easel, cutting painted paper with scissors and calling it "drawing with colour".
- Monastère de Cimiez · The garden next to it is one of the oldest in France, laid out by Franciscan monks in 1546, and it looks straight down over the whole city to the sea. Matisse and Raoul Dufy are both buried in the cemetery behind, a hundred metres apart.
- Arènes de Cimiez · A Roman amphitheatre for five thousand, built when this hill was Cemenelum, the capital of the province, and the town down by the sea was the lesser place. The Nice Jazz Festival was held in it from 1948, and the first one had Louis Armstrong on the bill.
- Cathédrale Saint-Nicolas · Built in 1912 with money from Tsar Nicholas II, on the spot where a Russian heir to the throne had died of tuberculosis in 1865 — the Russian aristocracy wintered here in such numbers that the city needed a cathedral for them. Ownership was disputed in French courts until 2013, when Russia won.
- MAMAC · Nice produced its own art movement in 1960 — the Nouveaux Réalistes, who signed their manifesto in Yves Klein’s flat in the city and worked with rubbish, compressed cars and bare pigment. Klein patented his own blue. The roof terrace is free and open.
Along the coast by train
The coastal railway from Nice to the Italian border is one of the cheapest good things in France: five euros takes you to Monaco in twenty minutes, and the line runs along the cliff with the sea below it the whole way. Every stop is a town worth getting off at, and a regional bus anywhere costs €1.70 flat however far it goes — a fare the region set in 2008 and has kept. Half a day, and the train is the tour.
- Promenade des Anglais · Paid for in 1822 by the English community, who subscribed money to build a path so that the poor of Nice would have work during a winter when the orange crop failed. It is named for them, it is seven kilometres long, and the beach beside it is pebbles rather than sand.
- Colline du Château · There is no château — Louis XIV had the fortress demolished in 1706 and the hill has been a park since. It is the original Greek settlement site, founded around 350 BC and called Nikaia after a victory, which is where the city’s name comes from.
- Villefranche-sur-Mer · Six minutes by train, and the bay is the deepest natural harbour on the coast — the American Sixth Fleet was based in it from 1948 to 1966. Cocteau painted the fishermen’s chapel on the quay in 1957 and the fishermen let him only because he promised to pay for the paint.
- Villa Ephrussi · Béatrice de Rothschild had the hilltop levelled and built a pink villa with nine gardens on it, one for each country she liked, and had the gardeners dress as sailors because she wanted the house to feel like an ocean liner. She lived in it for seven years and left it to the state.
- Èze · A village built on a rock four hundred metres straight above the sea, with no street a car can enter. Nietzsche walked up the path from the shore and said the third part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra came to him on it; the path is signposted with his name.
- Monaco · Twenty minutes by train and five euros, with no border and no passport. Two square kilometres, a third of it reclaimed from the sea, and the Grimaldis have ruled it since 1297 — when a man in a monk’s habit knocked on the fortress gate and let his soldiers in.
Getting to Nice and getting around
- Nice Côte d’Azur · Tram 2 to the centre, 25 minutes, €1.70 — the cheapest airport tram in France
- Gare de Nice-Ville · The coastal line runs to Monaco in 20 minutes for €5
- Gare routière · Every bus in the region is €1.70 flat, however far it goes
- Train des Pignes · A narrow-gauge line 150km into the mountains, from its own station
Cheap eats in Nice
Eight counters where Nice eats standing. The food here is Niçois and not French — socca, pissaladière, pan bagnat, all of them Ligurian and all of them cheap, because they were what dockers and market porters ate. A socca is four euros and you eat it off a paper with your fingers, standing, while it is still too hot.
- Chez Pipo · €4 a portion, closed Mondays, and the queue starts at six
- Chez Thérésa · €4, cash, and gone by two
- Lou Pilha Leva · €5-6 a plate, open late, and no reservations
- Cours Saleya · Flowers and produce six days, antiques on Mondays
- Marché de la Libération · The market locals use, and half the old town price
- Fenocchio · 94 flavours since 1966, and €3 for two scoops
- Maison Auer · Candied fruit since 1820, and Queen Victoria ordered from it
- La Merenda · About €25 for two courses, cash only, closed weekends
Museums in Nice
All the municipal museums of Nice are free — Matisse and Chagall are national and charge, but the rest cost nothing, which is unusual anywhere in France.
- Musée Matisse · €10, closed Tuesdays, and bus 5 from the centre
- Musée Marc Chagall · €10, 17 canvases on Genesis, and he designed the rooms
- MAMAC · Free, closed Mondays, and the terrace closes at six
- Musée des Beaux-Arts · €10, in a Russian princess’s 1878 villa, and rarely busy
- Palais Lascaris · Free, Genoese baroque, and 500 instruments in it
- Musée archéologique · €5, the Roman baths of Cemenelum, and three of them
- Musée Masséna · €10, belle époque on the promenade, and the garden is free
- Fondation Maeght · €16, and Miró and Giacometti designed parts of the grounds
Nature and day trips near Nice
- Promenade du Paillon · Free, and the jets run from May to September
- Colline du Château · Free, a lift from the seafront, and open until eight
- Mont Boron · Free, bus 14, and the circuit takes two hours
- Fort du Mont Alban · Free, from 1560, and the only fort on the coast never taken
- Parc Phoenix · €5, a 25-metre glasshouse, and seven climates inside it
- Jardin Albert Ier · Free, the oldest public garden in Nice, from 1852
- Èze · A village on a rock, and the exotic garden at the top is €8
- Mercantour · The bus to Saint-Martin-Vésubie is €1.70 and takes 90 minutes
Things to do in Nice with kids
- Promenade du Paillon · Free, 128 water jets, and a wooden whale to climb on
- Parc Phoenix · €5, free under 12, and there are lemurs in it
- Cascade du Château · Free, and you will get wet standing under it
- Plage Beau Rivage · Pebbles, not sand — water shoes make the difference
- Port Lympia · Boats to watch, and the Corsica ferry leaves at six
- Train des Pignes · A narrow-gauge line 150km up into the mountains, €25
Live music in Nice
- Opéra de Nice · From €15 in the gods, and the season runs to June
- Arènes de Cimiez · The festival is in July, and the park is free the rest of the year
- Théâtre National · From €15, and students pay €10 on the night
- Les Distilleries Idéales · A corner bar in the old town, and live music most weeks
- Allianz Riviera · OGC Nice from €20, and tram 3 goes to the gate
- Place Masséna · Seven figures on poles that change colour all night, free
Nightlife in Nice
- Vieux Nice · The lanes are the bars, and it goes until two
- Le Port · Where Niçois drink rather than visitors, and later
- Place Garibaldi · Arcades, oyster bars, and tables out until midnight
- Cours Saleya · The market by day, and all terraces by night
- Hôtel Negresco · The bar is open to non-guests, and the lobby is free to see
- Rue Bonaparte · The port’s own street, and the prices are local
Frequently asked questions about Nice
What is there to see in Nice?
The top sights in Nice are Musée Matisse, Musée Marc Chagall and MAMAC. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Nice?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Nice without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Nice?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Nice, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: Italian until 1860.
How do you get to Nice and get around?
The main ways are Nice Côte d’Azur, Gare de Nice-Ville and Gare routière. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Nice, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Nice that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Nice for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.