Vieux-Nice

Nice's baroque old town quarter

Vieux-Nice is Italian in almost every way except its location. The old town’s architecture is pure Genoese Baroque – deep terracotta, dusty gold, shutters thrown open above narrow streets. You’ll even see washing strung between windows and smell socca drifting from corner stalls.

It’s compact enough to explore on foot in a morning, but enchanting enough to keep you here all day. The streets shift constantly, with always more to explore. A covered passage opens into a bright square, a plain façade hides an ornate church interior, a fruit stall gives way to a vintage bookshop.

Socca – a thin, crispy chickpea pancake cooked in a wood-fired oven – is the local snack of choice. Worth tracking down from one of the old town’s traditional counters. Eat it while standing up, hot from the pan, with a little black pepper.

The old town has plenty of better-known things to see, but this might be the part of your visit you remember most.