Why go
This history explains why the coast developed grand hotels and foreign residential quarters before it became a summer beach destination. Tobias Smollett publicised Nice in the 1760s; Lord Brougham’s unplanned stay in Cannes in 1834 led to a villa and a small British enclave. Read those towns as former winter retreats, not simply seaside resorts.
The full story
In the late eighteenth century, British visitors began treating the coast as a place to spend the winter for health. The novelist Tobias Smollett visited Nice in 1763, when it belonged to the Kingdom of Sardinia, and later wrote about its climate for an English readership. Medical ideas about changing climate also helped attract affluent travellers. This was a seasonal way of life: visitors stayed for months, rented or built houses, and formed communities around the existing towns. Cannes offers a telling example. Lord Brougham was travelling toward Italy in 1834 when a cholera outbreak changed his plans. He stopped in Cannes, bought land, built a villa and returned for winters; other British residents followed. Later, Robert Louis Stevenson stayed at Hyères for his health and wrote much of A Child’s Garden of Verses there. These episodes explain the Riviera’s early resort buildings and its long connection with English-speaking visitors.
Useful to know
- In Nice and Cannes, look beyond the waterfront for the former winter-resort setting of hotels and villas.