Table of contents:
- The first settlements on the French Riviera
- Cote d'Azur as a resort
- Cote d'Azur as a source of inspiration
Video: Cro-Magnons, Pirates and Artists: The History of the Côte d'Azur before it became a destination for the rich and famous
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
A random phrase from the book of Stéphane Liège gave the name not just to a geographical region, but to a whole phenomenon. Côte d'Azur, or Cote d'Azur, and the French Riviera is part of the Mediterranean coast - from Toulon to the border with Italy, about three hundred kilometers long and a tourist's paradise with three hundred sunny days a year. Meanwhile, the Cote d'Azur boasts not only luxurious villas, but also a rich history that began as many as several hundred thousand years ago.
The first settlements on the French Riviera
The advantages that make the southern coast of France so popular once attracted the first people here. In the Terra Amata caves in Nice, the earliest evidence of human ancestry was found, dating from 380-450 millennia BC. And already Cro-Magnons - the historical predecessors of modern man - founded their settlements near the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, no later than 40 thousand years BC.
What can we say about antiquity - the ancient Greeks colonized these territories already in the 7th century BC, while displacing the Ligurian tribes who lived by gathering and simple agriculture. The Greeks built city-states on the future Cote d'Azur, the first of which was Marseille (then it was called Massalia), then (in the 4th century BC) Nicea arose - the future Nice. Other cities founded by the Greeks were Hyères, Antipolis (Antibes), Monaco. The Romans contributed to the settlement of the Côte d'Azur and the construction of new settlements - Cannes, Frejus appeared, and roads were also built, some of which, Via Aurelia and Via Augusta, are still the base for existing highways.
For the right to consider the coast as their own, various tribes and states fought for many centuries. Vandals, Burgundians, Visigoths, Franks, Saracens, Gauls became its owners.
Cote d'Azur as a resort
The cities and villages of the Mediterranean coast of France lived on trade and fishing, and the fame of the Cote d'Azur began to acquire fame in 1834, when the English Lord Brochem was forced to stay here for some time. Soon Empress Alexandra Feodorovna arrived in Nice, along with numerous courtiers who were not averse to spending their money on the Cote d'Azur and building villas. Beginning in 1856, the Cote d'Azur became fashionable among the Russian nobility. The so-called “grand-ducal train”, a route that existed until the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, even began to run between St. Petersburg and Nice.
The southern coast of France attracted not only rich foreigners, but also people of art. Painters Paul Signac, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Amadeo Modigliani and many others lived on the Cote d'Azur. Our writers and literary men - Gogol, Tyutchev, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Saltykov-Shchedrin - also did not deprive of their attention the towns and villages of Cote d'Azura. Anna Pavlova and Matilda Kschessinskaya danced on the stages of Marseille and Nice, the latter, by the way, left behind the name of the beach in Cap d'Ail - Mala, after the diminutive name of the ballerina.
Cote d'Azur as a source of inspiration
Cannes is now primarily associated not with fishing, as it has been for many centuries, but with a film festival. The first palm branches were awarded in 1946, just after the end of World War II, when the first festival took place.
The small village of Saint-Tropez, which in the Middle Ages managed to be a base of pirates, from the end of the 19th century began to host artists who were fascinated by the local landscapes. And at the beginning of the 20th century, trendsetters of fashion - Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli came here to relax. Saint-Tropez gained worldwide fame after the release of the films "And God Created Woman" with Brigitte Bardot and "Gendarme of Saint-Tropez" with Louis de Funes in the title role.
Now the streets and quarters of the cities of the Côte d'Azur keep the memory of the stay of eminent and wealthy guests - these are memorial plaques on buildings, and street names, such as Tsarevich Boulevard in Nice. Nice also boasts many villas that have hosted Russian writers, and in Cannes there is the Villa Kazbek, a luxurious building built by the Grand Duke Mikhail Mikhailovich, the grandson of Nicholas I.
The "face" of Saint-Tropez, no doubt - Louis de Funeswho played Gendarme Cruchot in a series of French films.
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