As for the food? There’s La Boulangerie on site, where ancient grains are milled and transformed into croissants and baguettes; the relaxed al fresco eatery La Guinguette, where you can order salade Niçoise and citrus sorbet while admiring the glittering Baie des Anges in the distance; and Le Bar for apero hour and nightcaps. Nothing else, however, can quite hold a candle to Thomas Vételé’s Le Restaurant du Couvent, a welcome riposte to the cult of haute cuisine and its many Côte d’Azur-based acolytes. The menu here, in other words, is less Escoffier, more Elizabeth David. At this time of year, a dinner might begin with chilled ratatouille made with vegetables from the gardens followed by herbed veal chops and peach skin soup. If that isn’t a good enough reason to book a flight, I don’t know what is.
Visiting the French Riviera this winter? Below, find Vogue’s edit of destinations worth planning a day trip around.
Villa Arson
Designed by Michel Marot in the ’60s and perched on Nice’s hill of Saint-Barthélemy, Villa Arson is both a hub for the contemporary arts and an architectural marvel, with its central 18th-century Italianate villa surrounded by grounds perfumed with mimosa and studded with Brutalist structures.
Île de Porquerolles
In the ’60s, Hemingway wistfully described the Côte d’Azur of his youth in A Moveable Feast, reminiscing about “the sand beaches and the stretches of pine woods and the mountains of the Esterel going out into the sea.” Catch a ferry to Île de Porquerolles from October onwards, and you, too, can experience the landscape of the Riviera in its most pristine (and tourist-free) state.
Musée Marc Chagall
The inside of this musée in Nice is given over to Marc Chagall’s religious works, including 1966’s The Biblical Message, while the modernist artist personally collaborated with landscape designer Henri Fisch on the gardens, complete with a pool of agapanthus that open on Chagall’s birthday every year.
Le Domaine de Manon
Le Domaine de Manon is an institution in Grasse, with fourth-generation grower Carole Biancalana cultivating the cabbage roses, tuberoses, and royal jasmine that form the basis of Dior’s perfumes. While the former blooms in spring, the latter are harvested from August through October—with the fields open to visitors every Tuesday morning.
E-1027
Booking is required for Eileen Gray’s first Modernist villa at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, which sits just around the corner from Le Corbusier’s Cabanon, but it’s more than worth the admin to see this ’20s masterpiece. About 40 minutes drive along the coast, meanwhile, lies the rosy, maximalist Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, whose form is inspired by the Edwardian Île de France liner.
Marseille
So much is made (and understandably so) of Provençal markets, but during the wintertime, bricks-and-mortar shops are the way forward—and nowhere has better choices on the French Riviera than Marseille. Maison Empereur, Le Pere Blaize, and Oeuvres Sensibles are all institutions in their own right.
Villa Kérylos
French archaeologist Théodore Reinach built the fabulously kitschy Villa Kérylos on the tip of Baie des Fourmis as a testament to the 2nd-century BCE Grecian landmarks he had seen on the island of Delos. Completed in 1908, the finished structure includes a balaneion lined with Hellenic mosaics, lemonwood furniture by Parisian cabinetmaker Louis-François Bettenfeld, and a peristyle filled with both Provençal light and Doric columns.
Chapelle Saint Pierre
Jean Cocteau moved to Villefranche-sur-Mer in 1924, and promptly set about convincing locals to allow him to paint this 14th-century chapel with mythical frescoes inspired by the life of Saint Peter. What he didn’t mention: he also planned on incorporating references to his own works, including Orpheus and his whimsical murals at Villa Santo Sospir in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat.
Musée du Palais Lascaris
You’re spoilt for choice when it comes to museums in Nice, from Musée Matisse to Musée Archéologique de Nice-Cimiez to the aforementioned Musée Marc Chagall, but there’s something particularly charming about Palais Lascaris, the 17th-century Baroque home of the noble Lascaris-Vintimille family, whose ceiling frescoes and Flemish tapestries are now juxtaposed with more than 500 instruments dating back to the 1500s.
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