Èze, Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat and Monaco Day Trips: Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild & Cliffside Villages

Because the Three Corniches (the coastal Basse Corniche, cliffside Moyenne Corniche, and ridge-top Grande Corniche) and the SNCF coastal railway run directly east from Nice toward the Italian border, three of the Mediterranean's most celebrated sights lie within 8 to 13 kilometres of Place Masséna: the wooded peninsula of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, the perched medieval village of Èze, and the sovereign Principality of Monaco.

1. Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat and Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild

Jutting into the sea between the bay of Villefranche-sur-Mer and Beaulieu-sur-Mer, the peninsula of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat was known to the ancient Greeks as Anao and in the Middle Ages as Cap-Saint-Sospir after the sixth-century hermit friar Saint Hospice. Fortified by Duke Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy in 1561 (until the Duke of Berwick demolished the fort in 1706) and established as a separate commune in 1904, the cape became a Belle Époque retreat where King Leopold II of Belgium acquired vast estates around 1900, including the botanical estate of Villa Les Cèdres (owned by the Marnier-Lapostolle family from 1924).

In 1905, Baroness Béatrice de Rothschild (1864 to 1934) purchased seven hectares across the narrowest ridge of the isthmus and commissioned architect Aaron Messiah to build the rose-tinted Venetian and Florentine-inspired Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild (also called Villa Île-de-France after her favourite ocean liner) between 1907 and 1912. Bequeathed to the Académie des Beaux-Arts upon her death in 1934 and classified as a historical monument in 1996, the mansion displays eighteenth-century furniture, Sèvres porcelain, and Old Master paintings. Surrounding the villa, landscape architect Achille Duchêne created nine themed gardens between 1905 and 1912 (French, Spanish, Florentine, Japanese, Provençal, exotic, stone lapidary, rose, and Sèvres), shaped like a ship's deck with musical fountains and a replica of Versailles's Temple of Love, originally tended by 30 gardeners dressed in sailor berets with red pom-poms.

2. Èze-Village and the Jardin Exotique (427 m)

Situated 8.5 kilometres (5.2 miles) northeast of Nice and 4.5 kilometres west of Monaco along the Moyenne Corniche, Èze (population 2,144 in 2023) clings like an eagle's nest to a sheer limestone crag 427 metres (1,401 feet) above the sea. Settled around 200 BC, held by the Moors for roughly 80 years until William of Provence drove them out in 973, acquired by Savoy in 1388, seized by Franco-Ottoman forces under Hayreddin Barbarossa in 1543, and stripped of its fortress walls by Louis XIV in 1706 before voting unanimously to join France in April 1860, the car-free stone village preserves the 1306 Chapelle de la Sainte-Croix of the White Penitents, the ochre Baroque church of Notre-Dame de l'Assomption (1764), and the Château de la Chèvre d'Or (visited by Walt Disney in 1956).

Crowning the castle ruins at 400 metres altitude is the Jardin Exotique d'Èze, created after the Second World War by Mayor André Gianton and Jean Gastaud (and redesigned in 2003 to 2004 by landscape architect Jean Mus), where hundreds of desert cacti and succulents frame sweeping views across the Riviera.

3. Principality of Monaco (13 km East of Nice)

Twenty minutes by TER train from Gare de Nice-Ville (13 kilometres east of Nice), the sovereign city-state of Monaco covers just 2.08 square kilometres (0.80 square miles) along a 3.83-kilometre coastline with 38,423 residents, making it the world's second smallest sovereign state after Vatican City. Ruled by the House of Grimaldi since 1297 (with sovereignty recognised by the Franco-Monégasque Treaty of 1861), the principality combines the Prince's Palace and Oceanographic Museum atop the Rock of Monaco (Monaco-Ville) with Port Hercule, the Formula One Grand Prix circuit, and the late nineteenth-century Monte Carlo Casino.