Picasso spent the last 12 years of his life here, but there are many other reasons to visit this hilltop village north of Cannes. If the French Riviera is not exclusively famous for being a playground of people with more money than sense – from 19th century Russian aristocrats via eccentric East Coast heiresses during…
Today, we shall make one last visit to the South West Coast Path, albeit one with a difference. On this stretch of the trail, you will (probably) meet more people than on all of the other stages together and (certainly) see more concrete, too, but what this part of the path may lack in scenic…
… whether you are interested in the history of landscaping or not … parks and public gardens reflect the times in which they were created no less than buildings do, because tastes in landscaping vary as much as architectural ones. In theory, it may be possible to adapt a landscaped garden to a newly emerging…
The Piemontese hills may provide a picturesque backdrop, but it is in the flat countryside where the city’s lifeblood flows To the casual observer, it may seem that the countryside in and around Turin is mainly Alpine in nature. The Alps indeed seem to be everywhere … … but while they undoubtedly attract the eye,…
Meet two of modern Italy’s founding fathers, a two-faced royal mansion and the world’s tallest museum In addition to the San Michele hike from our last post, we have prepared two more tours in Turin for you: one “town” walk and one “country” walk, both of them relatively short (with lengths of two to three…
Elsewhere in the world, the word may be that “the Russians are coming”; in the coastal region between Nice and Sanremo, they have arrived long ago and been part of the local communities for well over 150 years Once upon a time, before the advent of satellite TV dishes and the world-wide web, immigrants, even…
200 years after the event, we followed the Emperor and his army on the first stage of their walk back to Paris and to Waterloo On 1 March 1815, the recently deposed Emperor Napoleon landed with a small band of 1000 loyal soldiers in Golfe Juan near Cannes, arriving from his exile in Elba to…
On the basis of the evidence, it feels safe to say that the Empire’s troops did not come here to enjoy the beautiful beaches The history of the Riviera, if we are honest, begins in the 17th century when its oldest towns were built, and it really picks up 200 years later with the invention…
The capital of the French Riviera was the great love in the life of one of the 20th century’s greatest artists The list of famous painters who have been claimed as the genius loci of one Riviera town or the other is long: Cagnes-sur-Mer has Renoir, St Paul de Vence has Chagall, Menton has Jean…
Forbidden fruit: taste it and find out what made Sanremo famous. Coastal walks on the Italian Riviera, ideally, connect two seaside resorts that are well worth a visit in their own right. Whether or not these outings are successful, ultimately depends as much on these two resorts as on the walk itself – the more…