One idea holds the whole walk together: Nice only became French in 1860. For close to five centuries before that it belonged to the House of Savoy, whose capital was Turin. The colours, the churches and the squares are not decoration. They are that history, still standing.
Tap a number for the stop. Lines show the order, not the exact lanes.
Why this order
Three reasons. The markets on Cours Saleya and Place Saint-François are morning affairs, so they come early in the walk. The first stops explain the Savoy period, which makes everything after it easier to read. And the route ends where the old town opens onto the 18th-century city, so you finish in the right place for lunch or for the port.
The nine stops
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Opéra de Nice
There has been a theatre on this site since 1776, first a small wooden one, then an Italian-style opera house built in 1826 under the King of Sardinia. On 23 March 1881, during a performance of Lucia di Lammermoor, a gas leak near the stage started a fire that destroyed the building in minutes. Death tolls vary between sources; the lowest are above sixty.
The city rebuilt on the same site. The architect, François Aune, was from Nice, and his plans were approved by Charles Garnier, the architect of the Paris Opera. It reopened on 7 February 1885 with Verdi's Aida. Behind the stone walls there is a metal frame — after the fire, that was the point. The four statues on the façade are Music, Comedy, Dance and Tragedy.
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Palace of the Kings of Sardinia
From 1388, Nice placed itself under the Counts of Savoy rather than stay with Provence. Apart from a French occupation during the Revolution and Napoleon, it stayed with Savoy until 1860. In the 18th century the Dukes of Savoy became Kings of Sardinia, which is where this building's name comes from. It was finished around 1613, and almost every duke and king who came to Nice stayed here.
In 1860, Napoleon III helped the King of Sardinia against Austria in the wars of Italian unification. The price was Nice and Savoy. After a vote that went overwhelmingly for France — historians still argue over how free it was — the royal palace became the Préfecture, the French State's office for the region. In 1864 Napoleon III received Tsar Alexander II here, and in 2001 the European Union signed the Treaty of Nice in its dining room.
Walk one minute north to Place du Palais de Justice: a 19th-century courthouse on one side, Palais Rusca and its clock tower on the other.
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Cours Saleya & Chapelle de la Miséricorde
The food and flower market runs every morning except Monday, roughly 6:00 to 13:30. On Mondays it is an antiques market. The souvenir and flower stalls cluster at the opera end; the producers selling what they grew are further east. The low houses on the sea side, Les Ponchettes, stand where the old city walls ran along the shore.
The ochre chapel in the middle is the best baroque interior in Nice. It was built from 1740 by Bernardo Vittone, an architect from Turin, on the site of the King of Sardinia's salt warehouses, and took about thirty years to finish. After the Revolution used it as a store, it was bought in 1829 by the Black Penitents, a lay Catholic brotherhood present in Nice since the 14th century, who still own it. The plan inside is almost all curves. It opens only occasionally.
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Matisse's building
Henri Matisse first came to Nice at the end of 1917 to recover from bronchitis and spent his first winters in seafront hotels. In 1921 he rented a third-floor apartment in the large yellow building at the end of the square, and in 1927 moved up to the fourth. From there he had the market on one side and the Baie des Anges on the other.
He painted very few views of Nice. He painted interiors — fabrics, screens, open windows with the sea behind. In 1938 he moved up to the former Hôtel Régina in Cimiez, where the Musée Matisse now stands. The apartment here is private.
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Maison d'Adam et Ève & Sainte-Rita
Look up at the first floor of no. 8. This is the last of the decorated façades that used to line these streets. The date 1584 is on the wall, with the initials LT, most likely the first owner. The technique is sgraffito: layers of coloured plaster scratched back to make the design. Two naked figures face each other across the window, each holding a club. Officially it is Adam and Eve; the local version is a couple who lived here and argued constantly. Nobody knows.
At the top of the street, the church on the corner is one of the oldest in Nice, rebuilt in the 1600s. Everyone calls it Sainte-Rita, after the saint of hopeless causes, and people from the neighbourhood still stop on their way to work to light a candle.
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Cathédrale Sainte-Réparate
Réparate is the patron saint of Nice. According to tradition, she was a girl of about fifteen from Caesarea, in Roman Palestine, killed for her faith in the 3rd century. Her body was placed in a boat that angels blew across the sea to this shore — the origin of the name Baie des Anges.
The first cathedral stood on Castle Hill; when the Dukes of Savoy turned the hill into a fortress, it moved down here. Building started on 7 January 1650 under Jean-André Guibert, a local military engineer. In 1658 the vault of the nave collapsed in front of the bishop who had commissioned it, and he died of his injuries. The church was consecrated in 1699; the bell tower followed in 1731–1757 and the façade in the 1820s. Look up at the dome and its glazed coloured tiles.
Place Rossetti, in front, is the natural break. Fenocchio, on the square, has served ice cream since 1966, with close to a hundred flavours, some of them unusual.
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Palais Lascaris
Rue Droite does not look like much now, but for centuries it was the main street of Nice, and the noble families built along it. The street is too narrow to step back and see a façade, which is why the money went inside.
Palais Lascaris was begun in 1648 for the Lascaris-Vintimille family, one of the most powerful in the County of Nice, who lived here until 1802. After that it was sold, divided and badly damaged. The city bought it in 1942 and restored it in the 1960s: grand staircase, painted ceilings, stucco. Today it houses more than 500 musical instruments, the second-largest such collection in France after the Philharmonie de Paris. Open daily except Tuesday, 10:00 to 18:00.
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Place Saint-François
Every morning except Monday, this is the fish market — small, loud and real. After lunch it is gone and the square has been hosed down.
The square is named after a 13th-century Franciscan convent, closed during the Revolution and demolished. The tall tower is its old bell tower; the city added the clock in 1841. The baroque building with the balustrade on the roof is the old town hall, from the 16th century, its façade redone around 1760 to look like the palaces of Turin. The council moved out in 1868; since the 1890s the building has been the city's labour union house.
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Place Garibaldi
This square was laid out from 1780, when the King of Sardinia made the road from Turin passable for carriages. It was the royal entrance to the city. The architect, Antoine Spinelli, borrowed from the squares of Turin: arcades, matching façades, painted trompe-l'œil. Until 1848 a monumental gate closed the end of the avenue. The yellow-and-white chapel, built with the square in 1782–1784, belongs to the Blue Penitents, and the crown of Savoy is still on its balcony.
The statue is Giuseppe Garibaldi, hero of Italian unification, born in Nice in 1807. At that date Nice was under Napoleon, so he was technically born French. He spent his life fighting for Italy, and when his own king handed Nice to France in 1860, he never accepted it. The French city put him in the middle of its most Italian square in 1891.
If you have another hour: Castle Hill
There is no castle on Castle Hill. The fortress was demolished in 1706 by Louis XIV's army. What remains is a park, an artificial waterfall, the old cemetery with the memorial to the victims of the 1881 opera fire, and the best view over the Baie des Anges and the port. You can climb the stairs from the old town or take the lift near Tour Bellanda, at the sea end.
Questions about the Old Town walk
How long does the Old Town Nice walk take?
About 2 to 2.5 hours at an easy pace for nine stops and roughly 1.5 km. Add 45 minutes if you go inside Palais Lascaris, and about 45 more for Castle Hill.
What is the best day and time to walk it?
Tuesday to Sunday, starting around 9:30. The flower market on Cours Saleya and the fish market on Place Saint-François run in the morning and are gone by early afternoon. On Mondays Cours Saleya hosts an antiques market instead and there is no fish market.
Can you go inside the buildings on the route?
Palais Lascaris is a museum, open every day except Tuesday from 10:00 to 18:00. The Chapelle de la Miséricorde opens only occasionally. The Préfecture palace opens to the public on specific days, such as the European Heritage Days in September.
Where does the route start and finish?
It starts at the Opéra de Nice on rue Saint-François-de-Paule, one street back from the sea, and finishes at Place Garibaldi, on the edge of the old town towards the port.
Beyond the old town
Vieux-Nice is a walk. The rest of the Riviera is a drive — Èze and Monaco, the hill villages, Saint-Tropez. That is what I do: private driver and guide, from Nice, for the day. Message me on WhatsApp with the day you have in mind.