The Croix des Gardes in Cannes is that rare thing among green spaces…..
…. it is a park with a history that reaches back several hundred years.
Not that the Croix des Gardes in Cannes had spent all of these centuries as a park. No public garden is that old.
But it has occupied that small space between residential, agricultural and wild land ever since 1525 when the French king Francois-le-Premier installed a garrison of Swiss Guards on the summit of the hill, since this was the perfect place to survey the territory – both land and sea – from the Iles de Lerins in the west …
… all the way to the red mountains of the Esterel and beyond.
In more modern times, the Croix des Gardes became the Quartier Anglais, the nucleus of settlements around which the modern town of Cannes developed:.
Lord Brougham, generally recognized as the founding father of Cannes, was stranded here on his way to Nice and Italy (then in the grip of a cholera epidemic) and never felt the need to continue his journey.
The Croix des Gardes in Cannes gives you a fairly good idea, I believe, of what the whole area must have looked like when the English arrived – and what it was that they fell in love with.
The park is quite large (with a surface area of 80 hectares, it is four times bigger than the Parc du Paradou, last week’s recommendation for a half-day-out), and the paths that criss-cross the terrain clock up a total length of 20 km.
From Cannes town centre (the closed market in the heart of what passes for an Old Town in Cannes), you can be there in 15 minutes, although from the train station it will take you a little longer.
Either way, the nearest of the many entrances to the park is on Square Marcel Pagnol, just off the roundabout where the Boulevard Lord Brougham meets the Avenue de la Croix des Gardes.
To explore the Croix-des-Gardes, we chose to walk along the Parcours de Santé, a 3-km loop through the park’s eastern section. All you need to do is to follow the red arrow.
This path is calm, serene and full of pretty sights, but it does not include the summit cross on the top of the hill (the eponymous Croix-des-Gardes).
It will guide you, however, to another, even more spectacular sculpture: the monument for the ten members of the B-24 USAF bomber crew who were fatally shot down over this area on 25 May 1944.
The monument, the Stèle du Libérator, incorporates parts of the plane’s wrecked engine.
And while the route only includes two of the park’s five major viewpoints (the belvédères), there is no shortage of attractive views …
… and there are also a few surprises along the way – such as the city’s station for its equestrian police (you may see some of the horses) and a little village that appears to be hiding behind some young olive trees.
There are other trails around the park Croix des Gardes in Cannes which take you on a different route of exploration, which is why it is probably best to have a good look at a map and to plan your trip properly before setting off. (We did not, and it was only after our return that I found out how close we had come to the Croix des Gardes monument, which was, as it turned out, only a few steps off our route.)
Go here and click on Téléchargez le dépliant to download the small brochure which has been published by the Cannes Tourism Office. Yes, it is only in French, but this hardly matters if all you are interested in is the map.
The flora in the Croix des Gardes is a little less mixed than the flora in the Paradou. There are also some non-native plants such as the mimosas that Lord Brougham loved so much, but they are outnumbered by home-grown species.
In fact, it never ceases to surprise me how much some of the more isolated forests around the Mediterranean resemble their cousins north of the Alps.
This scene in the Croix des Gardes in Cannes, for example, …
… could easily be mistaken for one of Corot’s – minus the blue sky, of course.
One last tip: just before entering the trail’s home stretch on the return leg of the loop, you will pass a parking lot. It is worth while to cross it and to continue for a short while on the coastal trail before returning to your original route.
It is from here that we got some of the day’s best views.
If you leave the Croix des Gardes the way you came, you will be on its near name-sake, the Promenade de la Croisette, in little more than 15 minutes – that’s how close you are to town, and yet at the same time so far from Cannes’s madding crowds.
Reading the official literature which gushes about the “green lungs of the city”, you might anticipate a sort of New York Central Park experience with hundreds or even thousands of visitors. In fact, we met perhaps 10 people on the trail over an hour and a half – plus as many dogs.
The Croix des Gardes is not significantly more crowded than any hiking trail in the back country – which is what the Croix-de-Gardes feels like anyway, much more than like a municipal park.
And if the Cannois prefer to stay at home rather than enjoy that green space in front of their doorstep, that time capsule of the French Riviera as it once was: that is their loss, and our gain.
The national park Croix des Gardes in Cannes is definitely worth a stroll through on your next visit!
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