NICE

Historically a place where monarchs and aristocrats would escape the winter in favour of warm Mediterranean climes, this southern French city is at its best in the off season

- KARLINA VALEIKO

The coast at the foot of Mont Boron, east of the city

Think of Nice and hot, languid summers spent lounging on a beach are likely to spring to mind — along with luxury yachts, five-star hotels and elegant movie stars. But come to this eastern corner of the Côte d’Azur outside the summer months, and gone is the heat, ushered out by the salty breeze, along with the cosmopolitan crowds that typically fill the streets of the old town.

Not long ago, the off-season was considered the best time to go. Long before the city’s fame as a summer destination, it thrived as a villégiature d’hiver (winter resort), offering aristocratic and upper-class families a chance to escape the bitter, gloomy winters of northern Europe and bask in its mild, coastal Mediterranean climate. The European elites of the 1800s turned Nice into what’s now recognised by UNESCO as the ‘Winter Resort Town of the Riviera’.

Lou Camin Nissart hiking trail passes the hilltop fort at Mont Alban on the way to Mont Boron;

In the first part of the 19th century, it was mostly the British upper classes who would retreat here. A few decades later, they were joined by wealthy Russians, Germans and Austrians, among others, who brought with them their near-limitless funds and own ideas about how they wanted their winter homes to look — creating the eclectic mix of baroque, belle époque and art deco architecture seen in the city of Nice today.

These winter visitors, or hivernants, helped make Nice into what’s now the fifth-largest city in France, framed by the Provence Alps to the north and the palm-fringed Bay of Angels to the south. But despite its size, there’s little to suggest it’s changed significantly since the days of those early visitors — there’s hardly a glass-and-steel structure in sight, and life retains the same slow, casual rhythm.