Sunday morning in… Nice
Frank Preston explores a French Riviera city that is cultured, classy, racy and reprobate. What’s not to love?
It has happened a hundred times, maybe more. I wake up in Nice on Sunday morning, fling back the shutters and go out to greet the day. In the streets and squares, all-night people – all happily glazed – share café terraces with early folk on their first espresso. Warmth foreshadows midday heat. Beyond the Promenade des Anglais, the bay is spangled by light upon which a saviour might stroll. Night-before excess dissipates. Ugly people look good and beautiful people don’t look at all. The spirits rise. They have no choice.
Nice has been a hub for high rollers for 200 years, a simmering sunshine event, at once cultured, classy, racy and reprobate. Sleeping all that off favours early-morning lassitude (save among the seafront joggers). But sunshine energy hath soon murder’d sleep. Eyes and possibilities are wide open – as (in sane times) are cafés, museums and markets. Languor is OK up to a point, but you must join in as the Riviera capital embraces the day of rest with relish.
GOT THE BRUNCHIES? “Brunch? An Anglo-Saxon thing, no?” says a Niçoise friend, with that Mediterranean disdain for any cooking that post-dates Garibaldi. She’s lovely but not up to speed. Brunch has proved contagious. It’s now rampant around Nice. Or would be, if we weren’t presently locked out of everywhere it’s sold (including, of course, Nice itself ). Brighter establishments – like the new Comme Un Dimanche near the port – are providing carry-out brunch boxes for around £22. So let’s assume that normality is not far off, and stick with Comme Un Dimanche (10 rue Lascaris; 0033 4 23 13 33 12; commeundimanchenice.com; 8am-6pm; brunch formula £22). Young French couple Marie and Stéphane opened in January 2020 – conceivably, not the best moment they could have chosen – after three years in Australia. They mix bao (crunchy chicken or pulled pork) with Canadian pancakes, shrimp-laden warm brioche and a relaxed Sunday attitude.
Coffee shop Kililie’s used to have a killer, all-you-can-eat brunch buffet (21 rue Delille; 0033 4 93 91 35 65; kililies. fr; 9.30am-4pm; brunch formulae from £14.75-£25). Covid sent that the way it sent most buffets. Even when we are allowed back in, service will be at table – either inside or on the terrace – with ample veggie options (try piquillo peppers stuffed with fresh goat’s cheese and quinoa) and imaginative stuff for the rest of us. I find it difficult to get beyond chicken drumsticks in chimichurri or nuggets of hake, but there’s much for the sweet-toothed, too.
NOW WALK IT OFF
Curving round the Bay of Angels, the five-mile Promenade des Anglais quite fulfils the Riviera promise: crystalline light, Med vying with the sky to see who is biggest and bluest, dawdlers of all nations. Granted, some fringing buildings are regrettable, there is an abundance of flanking traffic (though that is being sorted) and leisurewear has dumbed down since boaters and bustles. But when I’m ambling here, I can never think of anywhere I’d rather be. Life sparkles. Start at the level of the Hotel Negresco, its white façade and pink dome heralding France’s most lavishly cultured luxury hotel. Head for the centre. Soon up is Musée Masséna (nice.fr; £8.75, but including entry to all Nice’s other municipal museums for 24 hours). The neo-classical pleasure palace is a museum now, telling both its own story and that of Nice (see Napoleon’s death mask), and swamping us with sumptuousness. The garden hosts the memorial to the 86 victims of the Promenade’s July 14 2016 terrorist attack.
Stroll on, either round the Rauba Capeu headland to the port or to the Tour Bellanda, once hotel home to Hector Berlioz and now containing a free lift up the Colline du Château. There’s not much castle left on the hilltop but the views are outstanding and the pleasure is of being among Niçois families idling Sunday away on the greensward. Bob down now to Vieux Nice where, on Place Rossetti, Fennochio offers 94 flavours of ice cream and sorbet (fennochio.fr). The Glacier Rossetti opposite isn’t bad, either, and queues are shorter.
PRETTY AS A PICTURE Depends on your taste. If it’s contemporary work – euro-realism, pop art and that kind of thing – make for the snappily-entitled Musée d’Art Modern et d’Art Contemporain (Place Yves Klein; mamac-nice.org; £8.75; but see Musée Masséna ( “Now walk it off ”, above). Up on Cimiez Hill, the Musée Matisse furnishes a first-rate vertical tasting of the artist’s life, through to the gouache cutouts of the early Fifties (164 Avenue Arènes de Cimiez; musee-matisse-nice. org; £8.75; but again see Musée Masséna, above). Take the bus up there – No33 is probably easiest – then walk back down, diverting to Avenue Dr Ménard for the terrific Marc Chagall Museum (museesnationaux-alpesmaritimes. fr; £7). His 17 Biblical Message tableaux swirl with a peasant passion and intensity, though his drawing could be wonky. Chagall sheep look like donkeys.
MUSIC MAESTRO
Not a vast amount of Sunday morning music in Nice, outside of the churches (see below). However, look out for Sunday morning family concerts at Nice Opera House. The Italianate spot dazzles with an opulence that says “special occasion” to youngsters and, while playing accessible works, the musicians of the Nice Philharmonic Orchestra aren’t patronising the 11am audience. This is the real thing – on June 20, for example, a programme around Haydn (4-6 rue St-François-de-Paul; operanice.org/fr; £8, under-12s free). Round the treat off with brunch on the nearby Cours Saleya at CaSa Leya. The constituents of a piatto dalla mamma are way too numerous to list here (36 cours Saleya; 0033 4 92 47 80 90; casaleya.com; 11.30am-2.30pm; brunch formula £25).
MARKET PLACES
The pert blooms, rounded fruit and rampant fertility of the Cours Saleya flower market furnish sensuousness sufficient for a Sunday morning, as every visitor discovers. Antiques and bric-à-brac gather near the port, around rues Cathérine Ségurane and Robilant. Best of all, take the tram (number one) to the Libération quartier – for the boisterous and huge open-air market and, across the way, the Gare du Sud food hall, converted in the grooviest-possible millennial manner from the monumental old station. Try Aix&Terra for Provençal foodstuffs, Emilie & The Cool Kids for cookies and coffee (lagaredusud.com).
LET US PRAY
The Holy Trinity Nice at 11 rue de la Buffa (anglican-nice.com; sung Eucharist 11am) replaced a smaller C of E church once overseen by Rev Lewis Way, the fellow behind the Promenade des Anglais. Buried in the churchyard is Rev Henry Francis Lyte, hymn writer of Abide With Me and Praise, My Soul, The
King Of Heaven. At the same hour, Mass gets underway at Nice’s Sainte-Réparate cathedral, on Place Rossetti, amid baroque resplendence underlining the belief that, unless you are shouting, God is not listening (cathedral-nice.fr). For Niçois of Russian origin – there are lots – make for the exuberantly decorated St Nicholas Orthodox cathedral for 10am worship. (Avenue Nicolas II; sobor.fr). Overseas holidays are currently subject to restrictions. See Page 2.