Promenade des Anglais and Baie des Anges: Seafront Walk, Hôtel Negresco & Pebble Beaches

Extending for approximately 7 kilometres (4.3 miles) along the sweeping curve of the Mediterranean from Nice Côte d'Azur Airport and the mouth of the Var river in the west to the Quai des États-Unis at the foot of Colline du Château in the east, the Promenade des Anglais (Passejada deis Anglés in Niçard, affectionately called La Prom' by locals) is the signature seafront boulevard of the French Riviera and the centrepiece of Nice's 2021 UNESCO World Heritage inscription.

From the 1820s "English Way" to Grand Riviera Boulevard

When British aristocratic families began wintering in Nice in the second half of the eighteenth century, the shoreline west of the Paillon river was little more than a stony bank of grey pebbles. Following a harsh northern winter in 1820 that brought an influx of unemployed labourers to Nice, English winter resident Reverend Lewis Way and members of the Holy Trinity Anglican Church funded the construction between 1822 and 1824 of a modest 2-metre-wide coastal footpath linking the right bank of the Paillon to the suburb of La Croix de Marbre. Locals dubbed the track the Camin deis Anglés ("the English Way").

Recognising the promenade's civic promise, the municipal Consiglio d'Ornato included a formal seafront road in its regulatory plan of 26 May 1832. After King Charles-Albert of Sardinia granted the municipality free disposal of the shoreline by royal letters patent on 5 May 1835, the city council approved city architect Antoine Scoffier's design on 29 April 1836. Construction began in 1844 on a causeway raised 5 metres above sea level. Called the Lungomare degli Inglesi in 1854 to 1856 when architect François Aune extended it to Magnan and added a double row of trees, the avenue was rechristened La Promenade des Anglais after Nice's annexation by France in 1860. It reached Sainte-Hélène in 1878, Carras in 1882, and the Var river in 1903. Widened into dual carriageways between the Opéra and Boulevard Gambetta from 1929 to 1931 and inaugurated in 1931 by Queen Victoria's son Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, the Promenade hosted the Nice Grand Prix seven times between 1932 and 1947 and served as the grand finale of the 2024 Tour de France.

The Baie des Anges and Iconic Landmarks Along the Walk

The boulevard fronts the Baie des Anges ("Bay of the Angels"), which stretches from Cap d'Antibes to Mont Boron across five coastal communes (Antibes, Villeneuve-Loubet, Cagnes-sur-Mer, Saint-Laurent-du-Var, and Nice) and receives six coastal rivers including the Var and the Paillon. Its name derives both from the third-century Christian tradition that angels guided the boat bearing the martyred body of Saint Reparata from Judea to this shore and from local fishermen who hauled harmless winged angelsharks (Squatina oculata, called pei ange in Provençal) into their nets.

• Jardin Albert Ier and Monument du Centenaire: Where the Promenade du Paillon meets the sea, this nineteenth-century palm garden frames the white marble Centenary Monument commemorating the union of Nice with France.
• Palais de la Méditerranée and Hôtel Negresco: Walking west through the Carré d'Or, you pass the monumental 1920s Art Deco facade of the Palais de la Méditerranée, the nineteenth-century Villa Masséna museum, and the 1912 Hôtel Negresco, designed by Édouard-Jean Niermans with its pink cupola and 16,309-crystal Baccarat chandelier. It was inside the Negresco on 28 February 1948, during the first Nice Jazz Festival, that Suzy Delair sang Henri Betti's C'est si bon in front of Louis Armstrong, who recorded the song in New York on 26 June 1950.