Below you'll find a list of all posts from 2019
In our American and English tours of Nice we often stop to visit the district of the Croix de Marble, the first neighborhood of Nice which was the home of the English during the 18th and 19th century. But if we go back a little further in history, we find ourselves back in 1431, when ten Niçois nobles were concerned …
It is a question that we are often asked, even by those who have lived in the city for more than 10 years. The quick answer is no. Nice was never Italian. Yet the administrative language of government in Nice was Italian and the local people spoke Nissart, a dialect of Occitan. During the time of the County of Savoy, …
The Vieux Nice Midday cannon: Every day at noon since around 1860, one can heard a sharp explosion in Vieux Nice. This is due to Lord Coventry, a retired British military officer who took up residence in Nice. The legend has it that his young wife was forgetting about his lunch. So to summon her, he installed a small canon …
It was the Americans in the roaring twenties which made Nice the summer paradise it is today. Before then, Nice was known as the Winter Capital. “On peut, sans crainte, avancer ceci comme un axiome: L’endroit du monde le plus agréable en hiver est cette partie du littoral méditerranéen dont le centre est marqué par Nice.” (One can, without fear, …
Via Nissa American tour of Nice looks at the French Riviera and its relationship to America. Garabaldi was an Italian hero, born in Nice (Place Garabaldi) but did you know that American President Abraham Lincoln asked Giuseppe Garabaldi in 1862 to lead the Northern Army in America’s Civil War? It was a particular challenging time for Garabaldi, as he was …
Did you know that Friedrich Nietzsche was a long term resident of Nice? While he took long promenades in St. Jean and Eze, his home was on the Rue Saint-François-de-Paule in Vieux Nice. He came to Nice due to his health problems and the excellent curative powers by which the Ville de Nice was widely known. Most of his important …
The answer is YES. There was even a store in Nice which sells mostly umbrellas? Called Parapluies Bestagno, it has existed since 1850 selling high quality, only French made umbrellas. Although M. Bestagno no longer owns the store, having retired recently, the new owners are committed to maintaining their devotion to top quality French umbrellas. A fabulous gift idea when …
When one thinks of Nice, they usually think of summertime, the beaches, the casinos, the celebrities, but none of this mattered prior to WWI. Tourists came to Nice for health reasons first, and then because it had become the winter gathering place of Europe’s aristocracy. Then tourism of mass came to Nice in 1864 with the railroad. A paradise on …
Have you ever walked by the église Saint François de Paule in Vieux Nice ? Perhaps you never noticed that the façade sticks out a bit and rises far above the actual building. That’s because the façade was plastered against the Church much later, not made at the same time. This Church founded by the mendicant Order of Minimes in …
Discover your history in the heart of the Cote d’Azur with Via Nissa. During our American walking tour of the diverse city of Nice, we will show you the city through the lens of the Americans who came here, lived here, fought here and changed it forever. In almost four hours, we’ll reveal how the history of America intertwines with …
