Introduction to Cagnes-sur-Mer/Le Haut-de-Cagnes

917km (570 miles) S of Paris; 21km (13 miles) NE of Cannes

Cagnes-sur-Mer, like the Roman god Janus, has two faces. Perched on a hill in the "hinterlands" of Nice, Le Haut-de-Cagnes is one of the most charming spots on the Riviera. Naomi Barry of the New York Times wrote that it "crowns the top of a blue-cypressed hill like a village in an Italian Renaissance painting." At the foot of the hill is an old fishing port and rapidly developing beach resort called Cros-de-Cagnes, between Nice and Antibes.

For years, Le Haut-de-Cagnes attracted the French literati, including Simone de Beauvoir, who wrote Les Mandarins here. A colony of painters also settled in -- Renoir stated that the village was "the place where I want to paint until the last day of my life."