Day 1697 (Sunday) 30th January 2022

It was another glorious day and after a nice lie in we caught the bus to Nice to meet Andy for lunch. We met at the horrible Irish bar Ma Nolan’s in the Old Port in Nice.

We both hate this Irish pub but Huw fancied a pint of Guinness. From there we walked to Place Garibaldi and had a superb lunch. 

Both Andy and Huw chose ‘fish and chips’ and I had the pasta with Italian ‘corned beef’. I knew it wasn’t going to be corned beef as we know it but I was very curious and it turned out that I chose the right option – it was superb.

On the way back to the bus stop we saw this wonderful window display of giant corks

Fascinating Facts about Nice

Nice is a veritable kaleidoscope of history, traversing scoundrels, artists, aristocrats, monarchs and martyrs.   Here are a few of the highlights…

First Tourists   Nice’s first tourists started coming almost 400,000 years ago and were transient cave-dwellers that came to Nice once a year to hunt woolly mammoths!  See the artifacts from the archaeological dig (now a museum) on the hill above the Nice Port.

Rock-filled Beaches   Nice’s unusual beaches are naturally occurring: the smooth stones come from the mouth of the Var and Paillon rivers (which now runs under the Promenade de Paillon gardens), where the river stones have been washing down to line the shores of Nice for eons.  

Original Nike-Town   During the Greek Empire in 500BC, the hill above the Old Town was named Nike, which is Greek for ‘victory’, making Nice the original Nike-Town.  During its multi-century Italian period it was called Nizza, and since becoming French just 150 years ago, it is called Nice.   The people of Nice are Niçoise, like the famous salad, and have their own dialect called Nissart.

Roman Holiday   During the Roman Empire, life was centered on the hill behind Nice, in Cimiez which is now the chic residential quarter.  Head up to the Jardins de Cimiez today and you’ll find the ancient Roman coliseum, which once entertained with gladiators, the ruins of an immense Roman bath complex, a 500-year-old olive grove, and a still-operating monastery.

The Bay of Angels   The bay of Nice was named after a 3rd century miracle, involving a young Christian who was arrested for her faith, across the Mediterranean in Palestine.  Her torturers tried their worst, but nothing could convince her to renounce her faith, and so she was finally beheaded.  As was the custom after such executions, her body was put out to sea on a raft to be desecrated by sea birds.   But the angels took over and guided the raft across the Mediterranean to the bay of Nice, where her body arrived pristine and untouched, and was declared a miracle.  The bay is named after the angels, and the young martyr became Saint Reparate, the patron saint of the Cathedral in Old Nice.

Medieval Castle   On the hill directly above the Old Town, there once was perched a massive walled fortress that protected the chateau and the hilltop village.  It was the strongest fortress on the Mediterranean coast and was thought to be impenetrable.  

Jewish Ghetto   In the Middle Ages the hilltop village was getting too big to stay within the castle walls, and so the town decided to relocate down the hill, to where Old Nice is now. As was the practice throughout Europe at the time, the town’s Jewish community was forced by law to reside on one gated street called Street of the Jews, where they were locked in each night.  The non-Jewish townspeople didn’t think much of this idea, having lived harmoniously with their Jewish neighbours up to that point, so they all worked together to tunnel a network of passageways under the buildings with secret doors back out to the village. 

 

You can still see the Street of the Jews (Carriera de la Juderia, between rue Rossetti and rue de la Loge), but it is now called rue Benoît Bunico, named after the Italian statesman who pushed through the legislation, 200 years later, giving equal rights to Jewish citizens.

Carnival   The Carnival in Nice originated in the Middle Ages as a festival of church-authorised excess where the masked revellers could safely ridicule those in power, and anyone without a mask got flogged with stockings filled with flour.  Nice now has a fun, big-budget Official Carnival (no mask required, but beware of the silly string), as well as various unofficial Carnaval Populaires which are no-budget free-for-alls and anyone showing up without a painted face still gets the flour treatment.

The Heroine of Nice   In 1506, this town of only 3,000 inhabitants was attacked by a flotilla of 20,000 Franco-Turks.   After weeks under siege the town was still hanging on, and the attackers once again tried to scale the walls.  With very few soldiers left to mount a defence, a washer-woman, Catherine Segurane climbed up on the walls herself and tried to beat back the attackers with her laundry bat.   Incredibly, her blow killed a warrior, whereupon she impulsively grabbed his flag, lifted her skirt, and make a gesture like she was wiping her arse.   The attacking soldiers were humiliated; the next day, weary and demoralised, the army gave up and Nice was saved.   Catherine Segurane is considered emblematic of the Nice spirit, and there are small monuments to her throughout the old town including a cannonball from the siege suspended on the corner of rue Droit and rue de la Loge.