Start from 64 curated places around Nice, FR, then choose the recommendations that fit your guests.
Restaurants & cafés
La Merenda
A tiny 25-seat room in Vieux Nice that is the essential address for Nicoise cuisine done without compromise — stockfish stew, tripe alla niçoise, pasta with pistou, and panisses made from scratch. The cash-only, no-reservations, no-phone format has been the same for decades and the queue that forms before service is part of the ritual. The printed menu changes daily based on market availability and rarely strays from the Nicoise canon.
Olive & Artichaut
A small Vieux Nice bistro with a Michelin Bib Gourmand built on clean Nicoise-Mediterranean cooking — pissaladière-style tarts, chickpea preparations, and seafood done with local producers and mountain-to-sea thinking. The two dining rooms are tight and the service is from the kitchen's own crew, which keeps everything personal. One of the best price-to-quality ratios for a sit-down meal in the old town.
Trails & outdoors
Colline du Château Loop
The short climb from Vieux Nice to the hilltop park and back is the single most rewarding 45-minute walk in the city — the effort is minimal (stairs or free elevator) and the views from the top cover the full curve of the Baie des Anges, the Port Lympia, and the orange rooftops of the old town. The park itself has shaded pine paths, an artificial waterfall, and a 19th-century cemetery that rewards slow exploration.
Promenade des Anglais Walk
The full 7-kilometre walk along the seafront from Castel Beach to the airport end is Nice's defining outdoor experience — flat, paved, and fully accessible, with the Baie des Anges spreading west and the palm-lined boulevard providing shade at intervals. The walk can be divided at any point (trams and buses run parallel), making it scalable from a 20-minute promenade stroll to a 2-hour full-length traverse.
Things to do
Opéra de Nice
Nice's baroque opera house on a pedestrian alley just off Place Masséna — a genuine working venue with a full programme of opera, ballet, and symphony concerts throughout the season. The building dates from the 1880s in classical Italian style, the acoustics favour the natural voice, and the box prices are a fraction of comparable houses in Paris or Monaco. A Sunday morning family concert is one of the most accessible and genuinely warm experiences available anywhere in Nice.
Musée National Marc Chagall
The purpose-built Chagall museum in Cimiez holds 17 monumental Biblical Message canvases in galleries designed by the artist himself. The stained-glass windows in the concert hall are among the most vivid works in the collection. A small, focused, and deeply affecting museum that works precisely because it does not try to be encyclopaedic.
Landmarks & sights
Promenade des Anglais
The 7-kilometre seafront boulevard that defines Nice — palm-lined, traffic-adjacent, and utterly Riviera. The pebble beaches are free and accessible along the entire length, while the broad west-facing arc of the Baie des Anges makes it one of the best sunset walks on the Mediterranean. The iconic blue Riviera chairs placed along the railing are meant to be used; pull one up and sit.
Colline du Château
The green hilltop park at the eastern end of the old town that gives you the best free view in all of Nice — the full curve of the Baie des Anges on one side and the Port Lympia and its terracotta rooftops on the other. The site of the original medieval castle (demolished in 1706), it now holds a waterfall, a Jewish cemetery, and pine-shaded paths that locals use for morning runs. The free elevator on the port side saves your knees on the way up.