Wellness Retreat in Nice & the French Riviera

Nice Côte d'Azur Airport is 7km from the city center — take the tram (Line 2) or a taxi. Check into your hotel and walk immediately to the Promenade des Anglais — the famous seafront boulevard that runs the full length of Nice's bay, lined with palm trees, the candy-striped beach chair umbrellas of the private beach clubs, and the legendary Belle Époque facade of the Hôtel Negresco. The Mediterranean shimmers in that specific deep blue that inspired every Matisse canvas. Walk east from the Promenade into Vieux-Nice (the old town) — a densely colored maze of Baroque churches, Ligurian-style painted facades, and the Cours Saleya market (the most beautiful flower and produce market in France, closed Monday when the antique market takes over the same space). Dinner in Vieux-Nice at La Rossettisserie or Acchiardo — socca (chickpea flour pancake, Nice's street food signature), salade niçoise (done properly, with fresh tuna and anchovies, not canned), and a glass of Bellet wine from Nice's own hillside appellation.

• ✦ Promenade des Anglais and the Hôtel Negresco facade
• ✦ Vieux-Nice — Ligurian Baroque in ochre and terracotta
• ✦ Cours Saleya flower and produce market
• ✦ First Niçoise dinner — socca and salade niçoise

Nice has two of France's finest small museums dedicated to single artists: the Matisse Museum in the Cimiez neighborhood (where Matisse lived and worked for the last 37 years of his life) and the Chagall National Museum, purpose-built to house the 17 large-scale canvases of his Biblical Message series. The Matisse Museum in its ochre Genoese villa is perfectly scaled — an intimate collection of paintings, drawings, and paper cut-outs that traces his entire career, with his personal effects adding biographical warmth. The Chagall Museum is more monumental: the Biblical Message paintings fill a purpose-built gallery with colored glass by Chagall himself filtering the Mediterranean light. Afternoon: take the bus or taxi to Cimiez Hill for the Roman arena and monastery garden (where Matisse is buried) and the extraordinary view over Nice and the coast from the hillside terraces. Evening walk along the Promenade before dinner at a seafood restaurant at the old harbor.

• ✦ Matisse Museum in Cimiez — 37 years of Mediterranean painting
• ✦ Chagall National Museum — Biblical Message series
• ✦ Cimiez Roman arena and Matisse's grave in the monastery garden
• ✦ Old harbor seafood dinner

Monaco is just 20 minutes from Nice by train (one of Europe's most scenic rail routes, hugging the coastal cliff) and entirely worth a day trip. The principality is tiny (less than 2 square kilometers) but entirely extraordinary in its concentration of wealth, glamour, and architectural bravado. Walk the Formula 1 Grand Prix circuit (it winds through the actual city streets), visit the Casino de Monte-Carlo (the most beautiful casino in the world, designed by Charles Garnier who built the Paris Opéra — you can enter the public rooms for free), and climb the Rock of Monaco for the Oceanographic Museum (founded by Prince Albert I, oceanography's great patron). The Oceanographic Museum's rooftop terrace offers a 180-degree panorama over the Mediterranean. Lunch at the Café de Paris on Casino Square — theatrical, expensive, and a perfect Monaco performance. Return to Nice by train through the cliff-side Corniche road tunnel.

• ✦ Monaco Grand Prix circuit walk through city streets
• ✦ Casino de Monte-Carlo public rooms — Charles Garnier's Belle Époque masterpiece
• ✦ Oceanographic Museum rooftop panorama
• ✦ Café de Paris lunch on Casino Square

The Maeght Foundation at Saint-Paul de Vence, 25km northwest of Nice in the Alpes-Maritimes hills, is one of the most extraordinary art spaces in the world — a private museum of 20th-century masters (Miró, Calder, Giacometti, Chagall, Braque, Léger) in buildings designed by Josep Lluís Sert and integrated with outdoor sculpture gardens, ceramic mosaics, and stained glass windows by the artists themselves. The genius of the Maeght is that everything in the collection was created for this specific space. The medieval village of Saint-Paul de Vence — a perfectly preserved hilltop village on a narrow limestone ridge — surrounds the foundation: explore the village lanes, the fortifications, and the cemetery where Chagall and Prévert are buried. Lunch at La Colombe d'Or — where Picasso and Braque paid for meals with paintings, and whose walls are now covered with an extraordinary collection of 20th-century art.

• ✦ Maeght Foundation — Miró, Giacometti, Calder in purpose-built hillside galleries
• ✦ Medieval village of Saint-Paul de Vence
• ✦ La Colombe d'Or — the restaurant whose walls Picasso paid in paintings
• ✦ Chagall's grave in the village cemetery

Cap Ferrat is the most exclusive and beautiful peninsula on the Côte d'Azur — a forested headland of Belle Époque villas, private beaches, and the path sentier du littoral that circles the entire cape at sea level, offering extraordinary views of the rocky coastline, the blue water, and the Alps. The Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild is the cape's great public monument: a rose-pink Italianate palace built by Béatrice de Rothschild on the narrowest point of the cape with gardens on both sides representing nine different garden styles. Lunch at the beach club of the Grand-Hôtel du Cap-Ferrat (one of the most beautiful hotel settings in France) before driving or walking 3km to Villefranche-sur-Mer — a perfectly preserved Ligurian fishing village in an extremely deep natural harbor, with the medieval Citadel and the Chapel of Saint-Pierre decorated by Jean Cocteau in 1957. Evening back in Nice for a last Riviera dinner at Le Chantecler in the Negresco.

• ✦ Cap Ferrat coastal path with sea and Alps views
• ✦ Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild — nine gardens, one rose-pink Rothschild palace
• ✦ Grand-Hôtel du Cap-Ferrat beach club
• ✦ Villefranche-sur-Mer Cocteau Chapel

Antibes, 23km southwest of Nice, has the Picasso Museum in the very Château Grimaldi where Picasso lived and worked for six months in 1946 — he donated the entire output of that period to the city, and the collection of post-war paintings, ceramics, and lithographs produced in a state of creative euphoria is extraordinary. Old Antibes is one of the best-preserved old towns on the coast — within massive 16th-century Vauban fortifications, with a covered market, fish market on the port, and excellent restaurants in the old lanes. Juan-les-Pins, directly adjacent to Antibes, is the Jazz capital of the Riviera — the annual Jazz à Juan festival in July is one of France's great music events — with a beautiful sandy beach and the pinewood promenade that gives the town its name. Return to Nice along the Corniche for a final evening watching the sun set over the Promenade des Anglais from a beachfront bar.

• ✦ Picasso Museum in the Château Grimaldi — six months of extraordinary 1946 creation
• ✦ Old Antibes within Vauban fortifications
• ✦ Juan-les-Pins sandy beach and jazz heritage
• ✦ Corniche Corniche sunset drive back to Nice

Nice Côte d'Azur Airport is one of the busiest in France with direct connections across Europe and beyond. A final morning belongs to the Cours Saleya market — the flowers in their buckets and crates along the full length of the market boulevard, the socca vendor with his iron pan and coppery disc of chickpea pancake, the pissaladière (onion and anchovy tart, Nice's other signature snack) being sliced at the market stalls. Buy crystallized fruits from the old confiserie on the Cours, a jar of herbes de Provence from the spice stall, and a bottle of Bellet rosé for the journey. Nice airport is 20 minutes by taxi or tram from the center. The Côte d'Azur at its best is everything the Impressionists and Fauves painted it to be — light, color, and the Mediterranean blue that explains why Matisse never wanted to leave.

• ✦ Cours Saleya final market morning — flowers, socca, pissaladière
• ✦ Crystallized fruits and herbes de Provence for the journey home
• ✦ Tram Line 2 to Nice Côte d'Azur Airport