THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 7, 1995 TAG: 9505060040
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEPHEN HARRIMAN TRAVEL EDITOR
DATELINE: NICE, FRANCE LENGTH: Long : 161 lines
AS PROMONTORIES GO, it is of modest proportions. But rising abruptly as it does from the sea to 300 feet, this place called La Colline du Chateau (Castle Hill) but known simply as le Chateau, offers a commanding view of Nice and the most visited area of the French Riviera.
From here you get a panoramic picture of what this legendary stretch of Mediterranean coast is all about and an understanding of why it is so appealing.
Through breaks in the dark, wind-bent Aleppo pines that have taken root in this rocky outcrop, I can see the colors of the crescent-shaped Bay of Angels change from turquoise at the shoreline to lapis lazuli as it deepens. I can hear, even from this distance, the crash of the foaming surf as it heaves onto shore and the rattle and rumble of the pebbles that form the beach as it recedes.
The azure sky is streaked with the white contrails of jets. I watch others rise slowly, gracefully, from the Nice airport in the distance, bound, I imagine, for Paris or North Africa or the Italian peninsula.
To the north, through a notch in the foothills, I can see the snow-capped Alps. To the south, through the haze that blankets the Mediterranean, I can make out a shape that is the island of Corsica.
Below, to the west, the jumble of terra-cotta red tile roofs and church towers and piazzas of Vieux Nice, the old town, some of them dating back to medieval times, spread out in the shape of a grand piano. Beyond that, sprawls the modern city, complete with boxy high-rises, speaking volumes to the rise of the cement industry and to the fact that this ``capital'' of the Riviera has grown - and changed - more in the last 200 years or so than in all of its previous history.
In the mid-18th century Nice became THE favorite winter resort - long before Cannes and Saint Tropez and Monte Carlo - first of English gentry and later other high-society Europeans, including a large colony of Russian nobility in the wake of the tsar, and finally American lords in industry and finance.
I suspect the English first stumbled across the place on the way to Italy on the Grand Tour. Pebbled beach aside (beach bathing was not a big deal in those days, anyway), the mild climate must have seemed simply marvelous. If you've ever been to an English season resort - Brighton or, perish the thought, Blackpool - you'll understand why.
Early in the 1820s an Englishman, the Rev. Lewis Way, engaged at his own expense some unemployed Nicois to lay out a ``comfortable walkway'' along the seafront. This two-meter-wide path following the curve of the Bay of Angels was immediately christened le chemin des Anglais (the roadway of the English). It quickly became the place to be . . . and be seen.
Widened and embellished over the years, it was later given the official name of La Promenade des Anglais and was inaugurated by the Duke of Connaught, one of Queen Victoria's sons, in 1931. Today this promenade, to which Nice owes much of its fame and reputation, is a heavily trafficked, four-lane, divided avenue lined with palms and always decked with flowers.
The Russian colony in Nice was not the largest, but certainly it was the most ostentatious. One of its relics remains, long after the imperial dynasty disappeared . . . and even after its socialist successor, the Evil Empire, crumbled.
In 1912 Tsar Nicholas II had the biggest Russian Orthodox cathedral outside Russia built in that part of Nice where the Romanovs roamed, the Parc Imperial. The cathedral, with its six onion domes, is a stunning blend of pink brick, light gray marble and vividly colored ceramics; its interior contains a treasure of icons, frescoes and wood paneling.
The tsar also built his winter palace just up the street. Today it is a school, big enough to house 2,500 college and high school students.
More ``palaces'' - really luxury hotels - sprang up on the northern hillsides, and 1,500 years after its Roman age of splendor Cimiez became an aristocratic neighborhood. Along the Boulevard de Cimiez, these hotels today are luxury apartments or private residences: the Alhambra with two minarets, the Hermitage, the Winter Palace, and, perhaps the grandest of them all, the Regina - named for Queen Victoria, who wintered here in her old age.
The old town is Nice at its charming best: a tight labyrinth of winding, narrow, cobbled streets, some steep enough to require flights of steps, some closed to vehicular traffic, some that should be.
I saw an adventurous driver sideswipe a pedestrian who had his back turned not three feet in front of me. The driver jumped out of his car, checked carefully to see if his sideview mirror had been damaged, then, with much arm waving, berated the pedestrian for getting on the way.
The shadowy streets open onto sunlit piazzas with sidewalk cafes and brasseries, fountains and pigeons, markets selling flowers and fish.
The buildings, most with wrought-iron balconies, rise four, five, sometimes six stories and are of many hues. The earthy tones with wonderful Mediterranean-type names - ecru, ocher, umber, sienna - seem to dominate, but there are grays and blues and pinks and greens, too.
Laundry hanging from the balconies presents a sometimes intimate glimpse into Nicois life, but shuttered windows keep much of it private.
This is the place, the old town, for street food - the food the locals dally over at sidewalk cafes. I stopped for a lunch of a ``socca'' - a Nicois specialty that is basically a warm, crispy, thin pancake made of ground chick peas and olive oil - and found myself in the middle of a movie set.
I didn't realize I was in the middle of a movie set at first because everyone seemed to be acting pretty normal to me. Then I saw a couple of cameras. Everyone was just sitting around on simple stools and benches at heavy wooden tables fiddling with wine glasses and picking at food and smoking. Mostly smoking. And thinking artistic thoughts, I suppose.
Everyone in Europe smokes, by the way. Except maybe about 36 people. I read that cigarette butts make up three of the 20 tons of trash collected daily in the Paris Metro. I doubt if the stats vary much here in the south of France.
Anyway, sitting at the table next to me is this skinny guy with bad hair wearing a black fake leather coat slung, cape style, over an ill-fitting turtleneck. He is sipping an espresso and smoking.
I do not realize this at first, but this scrawny kid is one bad dude. He is the movie villain. I discover this only when he gets up from the table, walks out and across the street, pulls out this absurdly big chrome-plated revolver and shoots another guy with long black hair combed straight back who is sitting in the doorway of the restaurant where my socca is coming from.
Shot him right in the head - with fake bullets, of course - and just strolled off. Then they did it again. And again. And again.
Movie making sure is boring. But I'm sure it will be a very popular movie.
I learned later that the victim, the handsome guy with the big hair, is a very famous young French actor. Someone said he is the Christian Slater of France . . . so you can judge for yourself how famous he is. I wonder, though: If he really is famous, why can't he just be the . . . whatever his own name is . . . of France?
I went to Cimiez to see the Matisse Museum, and left the hilltop suburb several hours later feeling that I had seen the real Nice - outside the red 17th century Genoese-style villa with decorative trompe l'oeil windows and trim that houses a great cross-section of his works from every period of his life.
One of the giants of modern art, Henri Matisse lived and worked in Nice from 1917 until his death in 1954, most of the time in a sunny studio in the Regina, just a block away.
Interesting as the museum is, the everyday life scene unfolding outside is more appealing.
Outside the museum is a park shaded by cypress and umbrella pine that includes the remains of a Roman amphitheater. The sun is warm, the sky bright, the breeze gentle. Birds are chirping. Young boys are playing ball amid the the giant stone blocks where Romans and Gauls once sat and cheered. Young girls shriek as they skip rope. Mothers push strollers. Old people chat on park benches. Dogs bark and prance around for a new place to pee.
The bronze bust of Louis Armstrong smiles a dimpled smile at it all from atop a rough-cut block of granite. The bust of Lionel Hampton seems to be laughing at the men sweating as they prune the grove of gray-green olive trees. The gravel roads through this park are called Allee Miles Davis and Allee Dizzy Gillespie. This, you may have guessed, is where the famous open-air Nice Jazz Festival is held every year.
In an expanse of gravelly dirt a dozen or so middle-aged men, blue smoke swirling around their heads from the Gauloises hanging from their lips, are engaged in what can be fairly called the French national game. It is commonly called boules although the proper name, as I understand it, is petanque (pronounced pe-TAANK).
The players use a shiny silver spheroid - it can he made of steel and chrome or rust-proof aluminum alloy - that is precisely 73 millimeters in diameter and 650 grams in weight. All you really have to know is that it looks like a small cannon ball and is good for absolutely nothing but dropping on the ground.
An ordinary pair sells for about $10. Competition sets may range up to $250.
The object is to toss these balls, usually from a distance of 20 to 30 feet, at a target. Closest to the target wins, of course, although the actual scoring system is a bit more complicated.
The target is known as the cochonnet, or piglet. Being unfortunate in both size and color - smaller than a ping-pong ball and made of dark wood - it is frequently mistaken for something else when there are dogs around, which is to say all the time in France. by CNB