History in Provence and the Riviera

Early provence -- French civilization started in the South of France. Human traces from 27,000 years ago—including cave paintings of horses and bison—are to be found in the Calanques cliffs near the resort of Cassis. The caves around Menton, the Vallée des Merveilles, and the Gorges du Verdon all boast traces of prehistoric habitation. And perhaps that’s no surprise. The region’s temperate climate, verdant valleys, and fish-stocked seas shelter manifold forms of life today.

Some 2,500-years-ago, while Northern France was still living in mud huts, their cousins in the south were enjoying the high life. Residents in the Greek colony of Marseille (ancient Massalia) and Nice (named after the Greek goddess Nike) were sipping wine and trading with the entire ancient world. Half a millennia later came the Romans. Antibes and Aix-en-Provence were on the Roman roads that stretched from Italy to their empire in Spain. Emperor Augustus later tamed the Ligurian tribes above Monte Carlo (the Trophy of the Alps monument in the town of La Turbie crowns this glory) to bring the entire French Riviera under Roman rule.

As the Roman Empire declined, its armies retreated to the flourishing colonies that had been established along a strip of the Mediterranean coast. Among others, these included Orange, Arles, and Marseille, which today retain some of the best Roman monuments in Europe.

Lonely monk Saint Honoratus arrived in Cannes in AD 410 and went to meditate in peace on one of the Lérins Islands just offshore. But news of paradise travels fast. Soon the saint was joined by dozens of other co-religionists. From these humble roots, French Catholicism spread. A form of low Latin that was the common language at this time slowly evolved into the archaic French that the more refined language is based upon today.

PROVENCE IN FLAMES -- As the Roman Empire foundered, a power vacuum plunged Provence back into the dark ages. Aqueducts and amphitheaters were left to ruin. Goths and Franks harassed from the north. Saracens attacked from the sea. Little wonder that so many villages in the region are built on rocky redoubts—like Eze, Les Baux, and Roquebrune—with a 360° panorama to oversee danger in every direction. Despite its eventual abuses, the church was the only real guardian of civilization during the anarchy following the Roman decline.

From the wreckage of the early first millennium emerged a new dynasty: the Carolingians. One of their leaders, Charles Martel, halted a Muslim invasion of northern Europe at Tours in 743. He left a much-expanded kingdom to his son, Pepin, who also threw the Saracen hordes out of Provence.

The Middle Ages -- When the Carolingian dynasty died out, the hectic, migratory Middle Ages officially began. Normans from Sicily and Muslims from North Africa harried from the coast. Enough was enough for local count William of Arles. His united Provençal forces beat back the Saracen tide at the Battle of Tourtour near St Tropez in 973.

Relative peace lulled the South of France out of the dark ages. Temples and monasteries, like the Cathedral of Aix-en-Provence and the Abbaye de Sénanque near Gordes, heralded more settled times. The marriage of the Counts of Provence into the French royal family ushered in several centuries of prosperity.

foreign incursion part 1 -- The rising wealth of what is now the French Riviera did not go unnoticed. The trading powers of Pisa and Genoa set up shop on the coast, most notably in Villefranche-sur-Mer, which boasts two sublime castles overlooking the sea. One local Italian family also pined for a piece of the action. In 1297, the Rock of Monaco was seized by Francesco Grimaldi. Monaco has been under de facto Grimaldi rule ever since.

The 80-year relocation of the Papacy from Rome to Provence brought further wealth inland. As those who have visited Avignon’s Palais des Papes will attest, those 14th century popes lived in serious style.

Alas, Provence’s burgeoning wealth and power was checked by the Black Death, which began in the summer of 1348. The plague may well have arrived in Marseille via a trading ship from the east. What’s certain is that it killed an estimated 33 percent of Europe’s population, decimating the population of the South of France. A financial crisis, coupled with a series of ruinous harvests, almost bankrupted the region.

Most importantly, the newly wrecked region wasn’t safe from their overlord to the north: Paris. After centuries of Franco-Provençal rule, conniving King Louis XI incorporated Provence into France ‘proper,’ with a forcible ‘Act of Union’ in 1486. Subsequent decrees that all births, deaths, and marriages must be notarized in French rang the death knell on local dialects and customs. France was here to stay.

Unfortunately, the ruling dynasty became more inept with every passing Louis. Louis XIV brought only pomp and taxes. Louis XV cared little for Provence. And Louis XVI ended up clueless (and headless) as the French Revolution cleared out the royals for good.

The Revolution & the Rise of Napoleon -- On August 10, 1792, troops from Marseille, aided by a Parisian mob, threw the dimwitted Louis XVI and his tactless Austrian-born queen, Marie Antoinette, into prison. After months of bloodshed and bickering among violently competing factions, the two thoroughly humiliated monarchs were executed.

France’s problems got worse before they got better. In the ensuing bloodbath, both moderates and radicals were guillotined in full view of a bloodthirsty crowd. Only the militaristic fervor of Corsica-born Napoleon Bonaparte could reunite France and bring an end to the revolutionary chaos. A political and military genius who appeared on the landscape at a time when the French were thoroughly sickened by the anarchy following their revolution, he restored a national pride that had been severely tarnished. In 1799, at the age of 30, he entered Paris and was crowned first consul and master of France.

But Napoleon’s victories made him overconfident—and made the rest of Europe clamor for his demise. Just as he was poised to conquer the entire continent, his famous retreat from Moscow during the winter of 1812 reduced a once invincible army to tatters. As a plaque in the Lithuanian town of Vilnius once told the tale: “Napoleon Bonaparte passed this way in 1812 with 400,000 men”—and on the other side are the words “Napoleon Bonaparte passed this way in 1812 with 9,000 men”.

Napoleon was exiled on the island of Elba, but not for long. He escaped with a band of followers to land on the long sandy beach at Juan-les-Pins, between Cannes and Antibes. His march to Paris through Antibes, Grasse, and Digne is commemorated in the Route Napoléon driving trail. After 100 days of terrorizing Europe, he finally met his Waterloo in 1815 at the hands of a combined British and Prussian army.

The Bourbons & the Second Empire -- In 1814, following the destruction of Napoleon and his dream of Empire, the Congress of Vienna redefined the map of Europe. The Bourbon monarchy was reestablished, with reduced powers for Louis XVIII, an archconservative. After a few stable decades, Napoleon I’s nephew, Napoleon III, was elected president in 1848. Appealing to the property-protecting instinct of a nation that hadn’t forgotten the violent upheavals less than a century before, he initiated a repressive right-wing government in which he was awarded the totalitarian status of emperor in 1851. Steel production was started, Indochinese colonies were established, and a railway system was begun.

It was the railway that finally brought Provence under central control. A link to Marseille connected custom with ports as far away as Vietnam and Polynesia, and with it prosperity. The rail route to Nice and Monte-Carlo in the 1860s brought goods of a different kind: English gentlemen. These early tourists escaping the British winter, including Queen Victoria herself, ushered in the trade in restaurants, hotels, casinos, and beach clubs, which continues in earnest today.

foreign incursion part 2 -- Provence has always been attractive to foreigners. Some might argue too attractive, given the cosmopolitanism found in resorts like Nice and Cannes over a century ago. Direct trains delivered Russian aristocrats from Moscow. English-language newspapers shared Riviera scandals. And wealthy American bon viveurs brought with them their taste for beaches, hedonism, and, crucially, summer tourism. International rivalries, lost colonial ambitions, and conflicting alliances led to World War I, which, after decisive German victories for 2 years, degenerated into the mud-slogged horror of trench warfare. Mourning between four and five million casualties, Europe was inflicted with psychological scars that never healed. In 1917, the United States broke the European deadlock by entering the war.

The First World War, then the Great Depression in the late 1920s, devastated France. But Provence, insulated from the global economy by its traditional industries of wine production and farming, was spared from the worst. The French Riviera simply carried on partying. American property developers like Frank Jay Gould turned sleepy seaside towns, such as Juan-les-Pins, into rocking summer resorts. Expatriate writers, among them Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, enjoyed the dollar exchange rate and relative freedoms while they could. Artists like Matisse, Dufy, and Signac moved south to capture such heady scenes on canvas.

Crisis struck on June 14, 1940, just as an ocean liner full of American film stars were docking in Cannes for the resort’s inaugural Film Festival. Hitler’s armies arrogantly marched down the Champs-Elysées, and newsreel cameras recorded French people openly weeping. Under the terms of the armistice, the north of France was occupied by the Nazis, and a puppet French government was established at Vichy under the authority of Marshal Pétain. The immediate collapse of the French army is viewed as the most significant humiliation in modern French history. In Europe, Britain was left to counter the Nazi threat alone.

Pétain and his regime cooperated with the Nazis in unbearably shameful ways. Not the least of their errors included the deportation of more than 75,000 French Jews to German work camps. Pockets of resistance fighters (le maquis) waged small-scale guerrilla attacks against the Nazis throughout the course of the war, particularly in Provence and Corsica.

The scenario was radically altered on June 6, 1944, when the largest armada in history—a combination of American, British, and Canadian troops—successfully established a beachhead on the shores of Normandy, in northern France. An additional southern wave of Allied liberators swept up the beaches of St Tropez and Ste-Maxime on August 15. Marseille was taken on August 28, and a third of all Allied supplies eventually arrived through its port.

Prosperity returned to Provence by way of a new airport in Nice, high-speed train links to Paris, and heavy investment in tourism infrastructure. Glamorous cover shots of The Beatles, Grace Kelly, and The Rolling Stones enjoying the Riviera high life helped, too.

Most French believe that Jacques Chirac ran a solid presidency from 1995 to 2007. But shortly before leaving office, a rotten core was exposed. Decades of pent-up resentment felt by the children of African immigrants exploded into an orgy of violence and vandalism in 2005. Riots began in Paris and spread around the country to the suburbs of Marseille. Most of the rioters were the sons of Arab and black African immigrants, Muslims living in a mostly Catholic country. The reason for the protests? Leaders of the riots claimed they live “like second-class citizens,” even though they are French citizens. Unemployment is 30 percent higher in the ethnic ghettos of France.

Against a backdrop of discontent regarding issues of unemployment, immigration, and healthcare, the charismatic Nicolas Sarkozy swept into the presidential office in 2007. ‘Sarko’ steadied the ship and reveled in his love for the French Riviera. He was regularly photographed cycling along Nice’s Promenade des Anglais.

In the ensuing years, Sarkozy deepened his affection for the region by marrying glamorous model-turned-singer, Carla Bruni, who maintained a holiday home next to the Presidential retreat near Rayol-Canadel. The tabloids had a field day with Bruni, whose former lovers include Mick Jagger, Eric Clapton, and Donald Trump.

Sadly for him, Sarkozy’s marriage to Bruni and his holidays with the rich and famous earned him the title of the “bling bling president.” In a show of how divided France was over his administration, he lost the 2012 presidential election to socialist challenger François Hollande by a whisker.

Hollande promised a government of hard-working technocrats. Alas, “Monsieur Normal” proved anything but. The nail in Hollande’s claim to run a scandal free administration came in 2014 when a president’s private life once again became front-page news. Not content with family ties to his first girlfriend, Ségolène Royale, or his current mistress-turned-First Lady, Valérie Trierweiler, he embarked on another relationship with actress Julie Gayet. His method of courting Miss Gayet (which essentially involved turning up to her apartment on the back of his bodyguard’s scooter) was deemed tacky by the French press. He also wined and dined his new squeeze in hilltop town of Mougins . . . in the very same restaurant where he had entertained his previous lovers.

Nearly 10 years of celebrity scandal seemed to tickle tourists and locals alike. Neither presidential flings nor a global recession put off visitors to this fabled playground of France. Passenger numbers through Nice Cote d’Azur Airport rose every year through the financial crisis. Some 13 million yearly visitors now disembark and hop into a helicopter, limo, taxi, free bike, or airport bus, depending on the depth of their pockets. With new airport terminals, train links, cruise ports, and cultural attractions planned for 2020, the South of France’s cosmopolitanism looks set to continue.

Note: This information was accurate when it was published, but can change without notice. Please be sure to confirm all rates and details directly with the companies in question before planning your trip.