French Riviera Road Trip: Saint-Tropez, Cannes & Èze

Saint-Tropez faces north. Almost every other resort on this coast looks south into the sun. This one looks across its gulf at Sainte-Maxime. That orientation, plus its position at the tip of a peninsula, kept it cut off for centuries. The main Marseille-to-Nice railway runs well inland, and only a slow local line ever reached the town, so the tourist crowds passed it by.

The isolation is the whole story. In 1892 the painter Paul Signac sailed in on his own boat, liked the light and stayed. Matisse and other painters followed, and Signac's circle turned a fishing port into an artists' colony. Then in 1956 Roger Vadim filmed Brigitte Bardot here in 'Et Dieu... créa la femme', and the town went global within a year.

The harbour you see is partly a rebuild. Retreating German troops blew up much of the waterfront in August 1944. It was reconstructed in the same pastel, narrow-fronted style.

Summer highs sit around 28 to 30°C, with sea temperatures near 24°C by August. Winters are mild, around 13°C by day, but this end of the coast catches the mistral, a cold northwesterly that can blow for three days at a stretch. Most rain falls in autumn, often in short, heavy bursts.

July and August are gridlock. One main road serves the whole peninsula, and the jams can stretch for kilometres. May brings the Bravade, a procession with musket fire honouring the town's patron saint, held for more than four centuries. Late September into October brings Les Voiles, a classic yacht regatta. June and September are the sweet spot: warm sea, open beaches, half the traffic. Give it one full day, two if you want Pampelonne.

Start at the Musée de l'Annonciade, a 16th-century chapel by the port. It holds Signac and the painters he drew here, so you're looking at the harbour as they saw it before the yachts. It takes about an hour. Go at opening, before the heat.

Then walk up to the Citadel, built in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The ramparts give you the whole gulf. Afterwards, find the tarte tropézienne. It's a brioche split and filled with a blend of two creams, topped with pearl sugar. A Polish-born baker created it in the mid-1950s. Bardot, filming here, reportedly suggested the name.

Pampelonne beach, roughly 5 km of sand, actually belongs to the neighbouring commune of Ramatuelle. The mistake is driving there at midday in August. Go early, or come in by bike.

In July and August, don't drive in. Park in Sainte-Maxime and take the passenger ferry across the gulf. The crossing is short and lands you right on the old port while drivers are still queueing on the D98A.

Cannes exists as a resort because of a cholera outbreak. In 1834 Lord Brougham, a former British Lord Chancellor, was heading for Nice. Nice was then in the Kingdom of Sardinia, and the border at the Var was closed for quarantine. He stopped in a fishing village called Cannes and built a villa. Other wealthy Britons followed, and the Croisette grew from there.

The film festival was a political act. France planned it for 1939 as a free alternative to Venice, whose festival had become a showcase for Mussolini. War cancelled the opening, and the first edition finally ran in 1946.

Offshore are two islands with far older stories. Monks settled Saint-Honorat around 410 AD, and Cistercians still live there. On Sainte-Marguerite, the prisoner known as the Man in the Iron Mask was held for over a decade in the late 17th century.

Cannes is sheltered by the Esterel hills to the west, so it gets less mistral than Saint-Tropez. Expect summer highs near 28°C and winter days around 13°C. Most rain comes in October and November.

The film festival in May is the event, but it's a mixed blessing. Most screenings are invitation-only, accommodation prices jump, and the Croisette is barricaded. An international advertising festival fills the town again in June. For a straightforward visit, go in late May after the festival, or in September and early October, when the sea is still near 22°C. One day for town, plus a half day for the islands.

Climb Le Suquet, the hill of the original fishing village. At the top, the Musée de la Castre sits inside a medieval castle and has a tower you can climb. From it, the view runs down the Croisette and out to the islands. It takes an hour, and late afternoon light is best. Before that, do the Marché Forville in the morning. That's where Cannes kitchens actually shop.

Take the ferry to Sainte-Marguerite. The crossing is about 15 minutes. Walk the Aleppo pine and eucalyptus paths, then see the Fort Royal cell. Saint-Honorat is smaller and quieter. The monks grow vines on a few hectares and make their own wine and a herbal liqueur, sold at the monastery. It's island wine made by a working religious community, and you won't find it in a supermarket. Most visitors make the mistake of picking only one island. Both fit in a day.

The two islands are served by different ferry companies from separate counters on the old port. Check which island your ticket covers, and take water and a picnic, as food on Saint-Honorat is very limited.

The Riviera summer season was invented on Cap d'Antibes. Until the 1920s this coast was a winter resort, and hotels shut when it got hot. In 1923 the American couple Gerald and Sara Murphy persuaded the Hôtel du Cap to stay open through the summer. Their friend F. Scott Fitzgerald turned that circle into 'Tender Is the Night'.

The town is much older than the glamour. Greeks from Massalia, today's Marseille, founded it as Antipolis, roughly 'the city opposite', because it faces Nice across the Baie des Anges. For centuries it was a French border fortress facing Savoy-ruled Nice. That explains the sea walls and the star-shaped Fort Carré guarding the harbour.

In 1946 Picasso was given rooms in the Château Grimaldi as a studio. He painted there for a few productive months and left much of the work behind. The castle is now the Musée Picasso.

The weather mirrors Cannes: hot, dry summers around 28°C, mild winters near 13°C, with heavy autumn downpours. The cape sticks out into open sea, so it gets more breeze than the bay.

July is the big month. Jazz à Juan has run in the pines of Juan-les-Pins since 1960, making it one of Europe's oldest jazz festivals. Expect full beaches and booked rooms. Late spring and September are better for walking the cape, when the path isn't baking. Give Antibes one day for the old town and museum, and a second if you want the cape walk and a swim.

Visit the Musée Picasso first. The building matters as much as the art, as many works were painted in these rooms with the sea outside. Allow an hour. Then walk the ramparts along the old town to Port Vauban, one of the largest yacht harbours in the Mediterranean.

The Sentier du Littoral, or Tire-Poil path, loops the tip of the cape over rock shelves and inlets. It takes about two hours at a steady pace. There's almost no shade, so start early. Wear proper shoes, because the limestone is sharp and uneven.

For food, go to the covered Marché Provençal on the Cours Masséna in the morning. Look for tapenade. The name comes from 'tapeno', Provençal for caper, which is the defining ingredient alongside black olives. Locals buy it fresh by weight, not in jars. Pick up olives from the stalls too.

The cape path is closed when the sea is rough, and gates block it with little warning. Check the forecast the night before, and plan the walk for a calm morning.

Nice has only been French since 1860. Before the Treaty of Turin it belonged to the House of Savoy and the Kingdom of Sardinia. Giuseppe Garibaldi, hero of Italian unification, was born here in 1807. That's why the old town looks Genoese and Piedmontese. You'll see ochre and red façades, baroque chapels and Italian-sounding street names, and the local dialect, Nissart, is close to Ligurian.

The Promenade des Anglais began as a charity project. In the 1820s the English winter colony, led by the Reverend Lewis Way, paid out-of-work locals to build a seafront path. It now runs about 7 km along the Baie des Anges.

The hill above the port is called Castle Hill, but there's no castle. Louis XIV's troops demolished it in 1706. The beach is pebbles, not sand, because the Var and Paillon rivers carry stones down from the Alps.

Nice sits in a natural amphitheatre with the Alps behind it, and the mountains block cold northern winds. That makes it warmer in winter than Cannes or Saint-Tropez. Winter days run around 13°C, summer highs near 28°C, and the city gets roughly 2,700 hours of sun a year. Rain is concentrated in autumn.

February brings the Carnival, one of the largest in the world, with parades and flower battles on the Promenade. It's the best reason to visit in winter. July has a jazz festival. Summer crowds peak in July and August, driven partly by cruise and airport traffic. April, May and late September to October are ideal. Give Nice at least two days, three if you're using it as a base for Èze.

Eat socca. It's a thin chickpea-flour and olive-oil pancake, baked on a wide copper or steel plate in a very hot wood-fired oven, then cut into rough pieces and peppered. It's Nice's version of Genoese farinata, a leftover from the city's Ligurian past. Eat it standing, straight from the oven, in Vieux Nice.

Walk the Cours Saleya flower and produce market in the morning, then climb Castle Hill for the view over the port and the bay. The climb takes about 20 minutes on foot, or there's a lift. In the afternoon, go up to Cimiez for the Musée Matisse and the Roman ruins beside it.

Order a glass of Bellet. It's one of the smallest wine appellations in France, grown on hills inside Nice's city limits. It uses grapes almost no one else plants, such as Braquet and Folle Noire.

Socca goes leathery within minutes, so don't carry it away to eat later. Wait for a fresh tray to come out of the oven and eat it on the spot.

Nietzsche worked out part of 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra' on the footpath up to Èze. He stayed on this coast in the 1880s and walked the steep mule track from the shore to the village. It's now called the Chemin de Nietzsche, and it climbs roughly 400 metres.

The village sits on a rock spike at about 427 metres for a reason. For centuries, raiders from the sea made the shoreline too dangerous to live on. Villages along this coast retreated to hilltops they could defend and see from. Èze's houses are packed tight inside its ramparts, and the lanes are too narrow for cars.

The summit once held a castle. Like Nice's, it was destroyed on Louis XIV's orders in 1706. After the Second World War the ruins became the Jardin Exotique, planted with cacti and succulents that thrive on the dry, south-facing rock.

Èze shares Nice's climate: mild winters around 13°C and hot summers near 28°C. The village's height makes evenings slightly cooler. The Nietzsche path faces south with little shade, which makes it hard work in July and August.

Crowds here come in waves. Coach tours and cruise passengers from Villefranche and Monaco arrive mid-morning and fill the lanes until mid-afternoon. Spring and autumn are best, ideally on a weekday. There are no major events to plan around. A half day is enough for the village and garden. Make it a full day if you walk the path and swim at Èze-sur-Mer.

Go straight to the Jardin Exotique at the top. The view takes in the coast toward Cap Ferrat, and on clear winter days you can sometimes see Corsica. Allow about 45 minutes. Get there before 10am, ahead of the tour groups.

Walk down the Chemin de Nietzsche rather than up. It takes about 45 minutes downhill on rocky steps, versus an hour or more of hard climbing. At the bottom is the pebble beach at Èze-sur-Mer.

Pack a pan bagnat from Nice for the beach. It's the Niçoise sandwich of round bread filled with salade niçoise ingredients and soaked in olive oil. The name means 'bathed bread' in the local dialect. It began as a way to use up stale bread, which is why the soaking matters. It's even better after an hour in your bag.

Don't drive. Take a bus from Nice up to the village, walk the Nietzsche path down to Èze-sur-Mer, then catch the coastal train back to Nice. The village's small car parks fill early, and the path has no easy shortcut back up.