Just east of Nice the coast bites in to form the rade de Villefranche, one of the deepest natural harbours on the Mediterranean — deep enough that navies and ocean liners have anchored here for centuries. Above the water the town piles up in ochre, red and yellow, a single curtain of old houses with the blue of the bay at their feet.
I. The harbour and the old town
The waterfront is a line of fishermen’s houses turned to cafés, the Port de la Santé still landing the day’s catch. Behind, the old town climbs in stepped lanes to the Citadelle Saint-Elme, the sixteenth-century fort on the point — and through it runs the Rue Obscure, a vaulted medieval street roofed over for seven hundred years.
“A harbour deep enough for an ocean liner, a town small enough to walk in ten minutes.”
II. Cocteau’s chapel
On the quay the little Chapelle Saint-Pierre, once a store for the fishermen’s nets, was decorated inside and out by Jean Cocteau in 1957 — the life of Saint Peter and the fishermen of Villefranche drawn in his light, looping line. It is small, strange and entirely his; the keys are kept just along the quay.
III. Between Nice and the Cap
Villefranche sits between Nice and the green peninsula of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, with its villas and gardens, and the coast path round the cap begins almost from the town. A short train hop from Nice, it keeps a quiet the bigger towns have lost — a working harbour that the twentieth century never quite tamed.
