Jardin Pastorelli

A close-up look...

The Promenade des Anglais

Before becoming the most famous place to take a stroll in Nice, the Promenade des Anglais was a path offering little comfort for the feet of the ancient aristocracy that Dumas evoked in 1940 in his book “Une année à Florence”:

“[…] and then, in Nice, there is a promenade referred to as La Terrasse, that has perhaps no parallel anywhere in the world, on which pale, frail women throng […]: it’s what’s the best and the worst about the aristocracy of Paris, London and Vienna. The men, on the other hand, generally behave marvellously, it’s as if they’ve come there […] to yield part of their strength and their health to all these dying old ladies […]”

Twenty years earlier, following a harsh winter, a crowd of poverty-stricken peasants rushed to the city. Anxious to find jobs, they accepted the altruistic offer made by the British to pay them to clean up this path beside the sea. And so it was that Dumas’ “Terrasse”, was cleared of its stones. Enthused by this initiative, the city went on to make further improvements. In the spirit of “fair play”, the people of Nice baptized the promenade “Camin dei Anglés”, a name that would later be translated from Catalan into French, following the annexation of Nice in 1860, and is now referred to as the Promenade des Anglais.