ABOVE: A winter’s tale
A winter’s tale
Provence is the most celebrated summer holiday destination in the world, yet the region became popular as a place to spend the winter. A glance up from the shop-fronts in Nice reveals elegant mansion blocks with names such as Winter Home and Winter Residence carved in marble above the front door. The Riviera was, for the aristocrats, royalty, entrepreneurs and politicians of the 19th century, the only place to be when the nights started drawing in.
Queen Victoria spent the winter on the Riviera with a staff of more than 100. There can’t have been many places that could accommodate them all but she occupied an entire wing of the Excelsior Hôtel Regina in Cimiez, north of Nice during the 1880s. All along the coast are statues of her and avenues named after her. In the Place Victoria in Menton, her statue was thrown into the sea by the Italians when they took over the town in World War II. Menton’s local council replaced it in 1960.
Victoria also stayed in Cannes, Grasse and Hyères and loved to take her carriage along to Villefranche and Beaulieu. The Prince of Wales was usually there too, although never in the same resort as his mother and mainly for other reasons, notably the American heiresses who were taking villas on the coast as part of a Grand Tour of Europe. His wife was not amused.
The idea of spending winter in Provence however had started some time before on the recommendation of the ever-complaining Scottish writer Tobias Smollett. In the 1760s, he wrote Travels Through France and Italy, a series of letters about the places he was visiting, the weather, the food, local customs, the unpleasant people he encountered and his fluctuating state of health. Letter 24, written from Nice says, ‘you will see that there is less rain and wind at Nice, than in any other part of the world that I know; and such is the serenity of the air, that you see nothing above your head for several months together, but a charming blue expanse, without cloud or speck.’
Read the full article on pages 32-38 of this month's issue.
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