City guide
The Riviera city that is still a real city: an Italian old town, a pebble beach, and the best base on the coast.
France6 min readUpdated August 15, 2026
Nice gets written off as a stopover on the way to somewhere glossier along the coast. That is a mistake. It is the only place on the Riviera that functions as an actual city, with a market that locals shop in and rents that people actually pay.
It was Italian until 1860 and the old town has never really accepted the change, which is excellent news for anyone who likes eating. Everything below is walkable, the beach is pebbles rather than sand, and the light is the reason half the painters of the 20th century ended up here.
One thing to be honest about: July and August are genuinely crowded and genuinely expensive. May, June and September are the same city at half the volume.
Niçoise food is its own thing and barely French: chickpea flour, olives, anchovies, a lot of raw vegetables. Order the local dishes rather than the ones you recognise.
Port
Socca, and effectively only socca: a wide chickpea pancake cooked in a wood oven, cut with scissors, eaten with pepper and a beer. The best version in the city.
Local tip: Cash helps and the queue moves faster than it looks. Closed at lunch on some days, which catches people out.
Ask the concierge to book thisOne dish, since 1923, and a queue that agrees with the decision.
Vieux Nice
Flowers and produce six mornings a week, antiques on Monday. Buy fruit, socca and a bag of olives and skip lunch entirely.
Vieux Nice
A tiny room with no telephone, no cards and stools instead of chairs, run by a chef who left a Michelin kitchen to cook Niçoise food properly. You book by turning up in person.
Local tip: Walk past in the morning and book for the evening. There is genuinely no other way in.
Vieux Nice
Small plates of raw and barely-cooked fish with a good wine list, in a room designed for long lunches. The modern counterweight to everything else on this list.
Ask the concierge to book thisThe old town is loud at night and glorious in the morning; the Carré d'Or is the opposite. Pick according to how you sleep.
Carré d'Or
An eccentric family-run hotel where each room was given over to a different artist, wrapped around a subtropical garden and a small pool. Nothing else on the coast is like it.
Local tip: Ask what the rooms actually look like before booking. That is not a criticism; they differ enormously and you should choose.
Ask the concierge to book thisEvery room commissioned from a different artist, and a garden with a parrot.
Built into the rock below the castle, with lemon trees, a pool, and the best sea view of any hotel in the city. Book a room facing the water or do not bother.
Ask the concierge to book thisCastle Hill
Simple, small and directly on the old town's best square. Good value, and you are two minutes from everywhere you will want to eat.
Ask the concierge to book thisVieux Nice
Two small museums, one hill and one very long promenade. Nice is not a city that asks you to work.
Cimiez
A red Genoese villa in an olive grove above the city, holding the work Matisse kept for himself. Small, unhurried and the best hour in Nice.
Cimiez
Purpose-built for seventeen enormous biblical canvases, with a concert hall and stained glass. Chagall chose the light himself and it shows.
Castle Hill
A park where the castle used to be, with a waterfall and the view every photograph of Nice is taken from. There is a lift if the stairs look unappealing.
Local tip: The lift at the eastern end of the Promenade is free and saves 200 steps. Almost nobody knows it is there.
Seafront
Seven kilometres of seafront with the blue chairs, the joggers and the light. Walk it early, before the heat and before anyone else is up.
The coastal train is the most useful thing here: cheap, frequent, and it stops at almost everything worth seeing.
A deep natural harbour and an ochre old town six minutes away by train. The best swimming near the city and a genuinely good lunch on the water.
swimming · lunch · half day
Ask the concierge to book thisA medieval village welded to a rock 400 metres above the sea, with a cactus garden at the summit. Very pretty, very busy, and worth going early.
views · village · half day
Ask the concierge to book thisThe last town before Italy, warm enough to grow lemons commercially, and the gentlest place on this coast. Gardens, pastel houses, and almost no crowd.
gardens · quiet · full day
Ask the concierge to book thisRamparts, a covered market and a Picasso museum in the castle he worked in. More substantial than most of the coast and less pleased with itself than Cannes.
market · art · full day
Ask the concierge to book thisEverything above, on one map. Colours mark what kind of place it is; tap a dot and its details open beside the map, and you keep your place. Day trips are left off, they sit well outside the city.
Pin positions are approximate: neighbourhood level, not street addresses.
Not shingle, not sand: proper smooth stones. Bring or buy the rubber shoes everyone else is wearing, and a mat if you like your hips.
The coastal line runs every twenty minutes or so and stops at almost every town in the day-trips section. Parking in any of them is a bad afternoon.
La Merenda and a few of the old-town rooms genuinely do not take cards. Carry some notes.
The best rooms in Nice are small, and the best tables do not take online bookings. If you want a table at La Merenda without walking past it twice, a driver along the Corniche, or a room facing the water rather than the car park, message the Simly concierge.
Message the conciergeEverything in this guide assumes a working phone: maps between neighbourhoods that follow no grid, ride-hailing instead of flagging taxis, a menu handwritten in Arabic. A Simly eSIM activates before you land, so you step off the plane already connected.
Get a Simly eSIMNice, France
