The Best of Nice’s Old Town: Highlights, Legends and Secret Spots

Nice's old town is one of the Mediterranean's most layered urban landscapes, where baroque palaces, ancient synagogues, and medieval streets tell 800 years of history. On this walking tour, you'll trace the stories behind Vieux Nice's most compelling landmarks, from a palace that hosted Napoleon and Thomas Jefferson to a legendary washerwoman who repelled a Turkish invasion by lifting her skirts.

The tour starts at the Opera tram stop, in the newer part of Vieux Nice. You'll stroll down Rue Droite, one of Nice's oldest streets, past the 17th-century Palais Lascaris with its baroque ceiling frescoes, and through the former Jewish Quarter, where an underground tunnel network once connected the ghetto to the outside world. Along the way, you'll hear the legend of Saint Reparata, a 15-year-old Palestinian martyr whose body supposedly washed ashore guided by a dove, giving Nice's bay its name: Baie des Anges.

You'll also discover how the Cours Saleya, now famous for its flower and produce market, was once a fashionable seafront promenade that predated the Promenade des Anglais. The tour ends at Tour Saint-François, a 50-metre baroque bell tower where you can climb to the best view in Vieux Nice.

On this 120-minute tour, you'll have a chance to:

• Spot a cannonball still embedded in a wall on Rue Droite, a relic of the Turkish siege of 1543
• Visit the Chapelle de la Misericorde, an 18th-century baroque masterpiece built using architectural sleight of hand to disguise two buildings as one
• See the last public washtub in Nice, once used by executioners to rinse their hatchets after beheadings
• Examine a 1584 Adam and Eve fresco on Rue Poissonnerie, believed to depict a notoriously quarrelsome couple who lived there
• Explore Place Saint-François, where excavations for a recent renovation uncovered medieval arches and the remains of an early 20th-century cinema
• Look up at Maison de la Treille, whose cascading vine was immortalised by artist Raoul Dufy around 1930

This tour rewards the curious – every corner of Vieux Nice has a story worth stopping for.