Today’s post is all about the best walk to have a perfect day in Nice, so good that it is well worth dedicating an entire day to it.
You start in the morning walking into the town centre via the Promenade des Anglais (all the way from the Parc Phoenix tram stop, if you can manage an early start).
Then turn land inward on the Promenade de Paillon into the old town & have a bite there (beware of tourist trap sit-down restaurants, but the socca street vendors generally offer good value and often sell other local delicacies in addition to their traditional chickpea pancakes).
This route allows you to leave the crowning bit for last: the walk up the Chateau de Nice.
It hardly matters that the castle itself was razed three hundred years ago: it is the walk itself that counts, as travel guide Ralph Waldo Emerson (very nearly) said, not the destination.
Although the destination – what you can see on the very top of Castle Hill – ain’t half bad, either.
Start the Castle Hill walk on Place Garibaldi and look for the ramp at the beginning of Rue Catherine Segurane, because this is the most interesting route up the Colline du Chateau.
Start Here to Have a Perfect Day in Nice
Soon, you will hit a wider asphalted road, which you must cross into the Montée Eberle and/or the Montée Montfort. Both ascents start here and will fork later on, but for the time being, the important thing is that you continue on the way up.
Whichever direction you take from here, you will be surrounded by beauty: there are panoramic views of the harbour and, shimmering through the trees, the entire coast east of Nice.
Later on, you will see some Roman remains, …
… and in between, some things that may be old or not, “semi-old” perhaps, it is not always easy to tell at first glance.
Neither is it always easy to explain what purpose these structures may once have served, but this uncertainty only adds to the mystique that surrounds the place.
The one thing you will look for in vain is the castle. That was destroyed in 1706 on the command of Louis XIV, the Sun King, who apparently got tired of having to engage regularly with France’s pesky neighbours from the Duchy of Savoy, a long-standing ally of the Habsburg Empire.
The only reminders of the fortress’s once mighty presence, at the time celebrated as one of the strongest in Europe, are the information panels whose maps will give you an idea how enormous the structure once was, and some pieces of minor outbuildings (warehouses and the like) that the French troops left standing.
These are, however, in general rather unassuming, and only a few bear that mysterious air that can make ruins so attractive.
Once on the top of the 93-meter-high Colline, you are rewarded for your troubles by magnificent views over the Gulf and the back country – at this time of the year, you can even see some snow-capped peaks of the Alps in the distance – …
… and, if you descend one level, by one of the city’s main tourist attractions: the famous Dijon Cascade waterfall, added to the park in 1885.
For your descent, we suggest you choose the exit at the western end of the Cascade that will take you to the Allée Professeur Benoit and past the Jewish Cemetery with its poignant marble slabs that lists all the city’s Jewish Holocaust victims. (After Nice was occupied by the Italians in 1940, the city became a place of refuge for Jews from the whole of France. This period of relative safety ended when the Nazis took back control in 1943.)
From there, head down the stairway opposite the church at the end of the cemetery’s Catholic section into a part of the Old Town that is supremely pretty and will serve as a perfect introduction into the Ligurian palette of colours.
This is also one of the few parts of the old town that are, generally, not overcrowded (no guarantee, however, specifically not during the summer months).
If you do not have the time for an entire day of hiking through Nice, you can also explore the Colline du Chateau as a standalone walk. We do this fairly regularly, about once a year, and have never been bored or disappointed. There are different routes of walking up and down the hill, making sure that you will see different things.
Castle Hill is as varied as the city that surrounds it.
But whether you walk up the Colline as part of a more comprehensive exploration of the city or whether you only have the time for a 60-minute stroll on the ancient castle grounds: you should wrap up your walk by stopping over on Place Garibaldi for a drink or a cup of coffee. If the weather plays along, as it usually does over here, this will be the perfect way of wrapping up a perfect day in Nice.
