The French Riviera, as the Cote d’Azur is so often called, is actually part of the larger Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur (PACA) Sud region of France. We visited all three regions and you can read about our Provence and Alps adventures here – or continue on this page to learn more about what we discovered in the busy coastal towns and the quieter hilltop villages in the French Riviera.

Mayhem and majesty in marvellous Marseille

I thought I’d dive right in and start with the biggest city in this region (and second biggest in France) Marseille! There’s multiple faces of Marseille and we learnt about them all on an intriguing history walking tour as well as diving into a few exhibits and museums on our own. I’ve collated our adventures in Marseille into sections below – dip in depending on your preferences.

The Marseille Waterfront:

We arrived on a hot Saturday afternoon in early October and headed out to join the weekenders strolling along the Corniche Kennedy, which is a 5km walking/cycling/scooter route that hugs the coast from the Vieux-Port, past Les Catalans beach, and Malmousque – where we stopped to watch the sunset over the sea. There were people perched on every rocky outcrop all along the way – reading, swimming, playing chess and having picnics.

There’s plenty of wine & fromage shops along Plateau de Malmosque that will sell you a chilled bottle, give you paper cups and wish you a ‘bon pique-unique’ to enjoy as the sun sets. Trés Francias! We walked back past Plage Catalans where people were still swimming at sunset and picked up a few groceries to cook a little dinner in our little apartment in the Vieux Port.

Marseilles colourful History:

Sunday we took a 2 hour history walking tour and learnt so much about the oldest city in Europe and second biggest in France. Founded by the Greeks 600 years B.C as a town they called Massalia, Marseille is 500 years older than Paris and older than Rome. It was chosen by the Greeks for its natural, deep and calm port and they bought olive oil wine and pottery in to the continent by sea.

We explored the original Le Panier district the old town on the north side of the old port  where merchants and migrants lived including Romans, Armenians, Neapolitans, and Africans, among others, since 600 B.C. It was one of the areas decimated by the Nazis when they occupied and  ‘cleansed’ Marseille by bombing all the buildings in this district and carting off its inhabitants by train to death camps. It was rebuilt in the brutalist post war style with solid concrete buildings in the 1950s and more recently has been ‘gentrified’ as Marseille applied to become a 2013 European Capital of Culture. They were successful in their bid and the last 12 years has seen Le Panier, and indeed most of Marseille cleaned up and there are now with lots of cute cafes and local produce shops, open squares with restaurants and reduced traffic, green open spaces, security cameras everywhere, buildings sandblasted and new museums and cultural centres installed. There’s still plenty of grunge to be found however – with great graffiti, nightclubs that open at midnight and close at 6am (we had one opposite our apartment!) and a very eclectic ethnic mix especially around the Notre Dame du Mont area and the 2nd arrondisement that produces great cuisine, music and art.

Marseille Monuments and high points:

Marseille has its fare share of impressive monuments starting with the green and white striped La Major Cathedral which is 170 years young and was designed to greet sailors who came into port with a big statement. There’s also the Basilica Notre Dame de la Garde perched on the ruins of an old castle up on La Garde hill. There’s a giant gold statue of the Virgin Mary on top that was under renovation when we visited. The views are fabulous and worth the climb up. Inside is ornate and full of colourful marble columns.  Also the Vielle Charite – an old house for the poor built in 1640 and now home to scientific and cultural exhibitions. Also worth a mention is the Casquer Caves exhibit opened in 2022, it allows people to safely explore a replica of the Cosquer Cave and discover the cave paintings and rock formations – afterwards you can head upstairs to see life sized replicas of all the animals depicted in the cave paintings below – they are terrifying real and it is all quite spectacular! .

Other ‘high points’ with great views over the city are the Jardin de la Collin Puget (there’s good views over the town but also of  well buffed men and women using the playground to build their bodies!) and the Old Fort. The nicest of all however is the beautiful grassy green Jardin Emile Duclaux which surrounds the Palais du Pharo. This is a fav sunset spot where you can watch the sun set over the sea and the old port light up.

Marseille’s unique Products:

Marseille is famous for its olive oil soap and we learned that it must contain 72% olive oil, to qualify as ‘fabrique a Marseille’ soap and be stamped with the ‘Savon de Marseille’ seal of authenticity., It also must be the natural green olive oil colour and have no perfume. It is so pure it can be used on all skin types and to wash hair, bodies and clothes.

We tried the Navette’s – a long baton shaped rusk-meets-biscuit, slightly flavoured with orange blossom  and the Panisse – Marseilles version of the chickpea pancake that Nice calls Socca. And of course there is the Pastis de Marseille a stronger version (45% ABV) of the famous Pasits with higher anise content.

People of Marseille

We met the world in Marseilles. Literally. There’s officially 1.6 million people living in the city and surrounds. They are made up of people who have come over the century from Russia, Armenia, Vietnamese, Corsica, Spanish, North Africans and Sub-Saharan Africans and Italy. Marseille is now home to the second-largest Armenian and Corsican population with large populations of Chinese, Comorians, Turks, Maghrebis, and Vietnamese. They bring a diverse mix of cuisines, fashion, music and colour to make Marseille a truly vibrant city.

Wonderful waterfront towns along the French Riviera

The Côte d’Azur (French Riviera) features a long line of iconic, glamorous cities and dotted in between are a few more charming, historic villages as well. We preferred the smaller ones but had to take a look at iconic Nice and Antibes to see what the fuss was about and we were quite pleasantly surprised.

Nice in a nutshell

The capital of the Riviera, is famous for its Promenade des Anglais – which is what set this town up in the first place as a tourist destination. The English wanted a place to walk along the healthy seaside and the 7km promenade was born along the Baie des Anges. We parked about 3 kms out of town and walked in along the promenade past the many pebble beaches and beach clubs on one side and the sprawling marble fronted hotels (The pink domed Hotel Negresco, the art deco Palais de la Mediterranée ) on the other into the old town.

First stop was the Cours Saleya market which is the famous old flower and fruits market that started in 1861and also sells great local food like Socca – a Gluten Free pancake style dish made from chick peas, salt and olive oil and pissaladière (caramelized onion and anchovy tart).

 We then wandered into the Old Town (Vieux Nice), winding through the narrow streets and marvelling at all the old Italian trades stores, the multi-cultural restaurants and the tiny boutiques. We emerged out in the newer part of town at the and wandered along Avenue Jean-Médecin taking in the scenic surrounds of Place Masséna, with its crazy tilework, big baroque-style fountain and 19th-century red-ochre buildings before wandering back along the beachfront to find our car! Boulevard Jean Jaurès and the Fontaine du Soleil.

Seaside walking paths and beaches of Antibes

Antibes is an old fortified town on the coast that captured the imagination of many artists and writers, including Graham Greene, Max Ernst and Picasso, It’s choc full of fancy boats and boasts on eof the few sandy beaches on this coastline and also has a lovely little town with narrow cobblestone streets festooned with flowers but as it was impossible to park and access this part of the town we opted to explore the famous peninsula – Cap d’Antibes  instead. The Cap reaches out into the turquoise sea and has some rather splendid beaches with waterfront cafes. Tucked up behind these beaches are many famous hotels such as the Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc and residential streets lined with pine trees and prestigious million-billion dollar homes.

Our goal was to buy a baguette and walk  Le Sentier du Littoral – a 5km Coastal around the southernmost tip of Cap Corse. The walk starts at the lovely Garoupe beach, (Plage de la Garoupe) where we thought we would picnic and swim before our walk but when we arrived we found the beach closed for restoration and no shops in sight for our baguette purchase. Alas, we did find the charming little café Le Rocher perched on a swimming platform overlooking Garoupe beach and (sigh) had to settle for our first ‘lunch out’ on our trip. We managed to grab the last table at 12pm and settled in with our Perrier, Caeser salad and hamburger, wondering why we hadn’t don’t this before.

Suitably full, we started off on the rocky path that almost falls into the water in some parts, marvelling at how they had carved steps and paths so close to the sea. Every now and they there would be grand gates signalling a mansion above us, (some had guards patrolling their fence line) and little private piers or steps down to alcoves. The coastal part of the walk stops after 2.5km at a viewing point where if you crane your neck you can get a glimpse of the speedboats anchored in Billionaires Bay where the billionaires themselves no doubt were sunning on this little nook of a beach.

For pedestrians, this is where the glory ends and its more of a trudge through the lanes that give access to aforementioned mansions  along the Sentier des Douaniers (Customs Officers’ Path) on the right, which leads you away from the seafront. After ascending the first hill you turn left onto Avenue Mme Beaumont. Continue along this avenue until you reach Boulevard Kennedy, where you’ll turn right onto Avenue Tour Gandolphe, then Avenue André Sella, which will take you back to the Garoupe beach parking lot.

Sweet delights of Sainte Maxime

We visited Sainte Maxime in June 2024 but including it in this post as it is in the start of the French Riviera/ Côte d’Azur. This pretty coastal town is often referred to as the poor mans St Tropez (you can get to Sainte- Tropez by ferry across the Golfe de Sainte-Tropez) but to us, it was way more to our liking as it has a more chilled charm.

We stayed a stone’s throw from the beach at the affordable little hotel Le Revest with a rooftop pool which we hardly used as the beaches are sandy and the water lovely and clear for swimming right at the end of our street in Baie de Bougnon. We admired the many beach bars from afar but couldn’t work out why you’d pay to sit in one when the beach was clean, lovely and free!

We wandered the old cobblestone town’s pretty shops each afternoon and at night, enjoyed listening to guitarists as we dined al fresco in the square. Sainte Maxime also has a Promenade des Anglais that winds around the beachfront and the marina in the Port Privé de Sainte Maxime where you can play ‘guess how much that mega yacht’ cost!

Hillside towns of the Côte d’Azur: Valbonne, Biot, Mouans Sartoux

We had a week at a lovely villa 30 minutes from Grassee and Nice, near the sweet little village of Valbonne and enjoyed discovering some super low key but charming villages in the area. We avoided Grasse, which we had driven through on the way into Valbonne as its’ zig zag streets were so congested and parking so impossible we sought solace in the smaller towns instead.

Structured but stylish Valbonne

Valbonne is a cute village in a small basin alongside the Brague River about 20 kms from the coast.  It’s layout is quite unique as it has a strict rectangular grid (a bit like our home town of Melbourne !). It’s an anomaly to find the streets of a medieval village arranged in such a rigid pattern – as most towns were built to ward off invaders with twisted confusing narrow streets, uneven steps and cobbles and many terraces. Founded in 1519, Valbonnne village is now best known for its stellar weekly market every Friday which starts in the central Place des Arcades then takes over all ten blocks in town selling fabulous food, wares, clothing and art.

There’s a fabulous walk along the Sentier de la Brague from Valbonne to Biot – it’s about 11 km each way. We did the hike backwards, starting from the Abbaye de Valbonne then walking uphill to get to the Brage river. There’s quite a few river crossings (on stepping stones) and some scrambles around rocks jutting out over the river but overall this was a moderate level hike with lots of shade, some lovely swimming holes, picnic tables along the river, some interesting stone sculptures, an old stone mill and the Pont des Tamarins, the Domaine de la Verrière and the Grotte Mathilde. We walked up into the hilltop town of Biot via a bamboo forest and into the pretty town known for its glass and ceramics in mid afternoon. We should have taken the bus back to Valbonne as the hike back wasn’t nearly as rewarding and we got lost trying to take a short cut that ended up making our walk nearly 25kms!

Mouans-Sartoux and Jardin du MIPS

Mouans-Sartoux is another cute town similar to Valbonne with a grid layout. This little town is mostly residential and only has a few cafe – restaurants, a little square where they sell fresh pasta and flowers, and a lovely chateau – which was setting up for a festival when we were there and a rather modern town hall with regular exhibitions.

The Jardins du MIP just outside of Mouans-Sartoux is worth a visit – there’s a little cafe opposite for an organic toastie or bowl of soup and the gardens which have a small entry fee have a good educational exhibit and lots of lovely pathways to meander amongst a wide variety of plants, herbs, succulents and has herbal and perfume plants.