Vieux Nice

Leave your maps and books behind and embrace Nice’s labyrinthine baroque old town. There is something unique about this tangle of alleyways and backstreets bursting with local life and history. The northern end of this historical centre, running against bd Jean Jaurès, is packed with shops and holes in the wall, all claiming to sell specialités niçoises more genuine than their neighbours’. Further south, atmospheric squares are filled with cafés, street artists and delighted flâneurs (strollers). Cours Saleya, running parallel to the seafront at the southern end of Vieux Nice, is the venue for one of the most vibrant, vividly hued local marketsin the south of France.

Jutting above the rooflines are the spires of some historic churches, including the baroque Cathédrale Ste-Réparate (place Rossetti) and its stunning glazed terracotta dome, built around 1650, and the exuberantly mid-18th-century Chapelle de la Miséricorde (cours Saleya).

Perpendicular to rue Rossetti is the notorious rue Benoît Bunico, Nice’s old Jewish ghetto, where a 1430 law ordered Jews to be locked in by gates at each end of the street from sunset to dawn.