By Garen Ajderhanyan · 16 July 2026 · 8 min read
In brief
Nice was first a winter town. From the end of the 18th century, the English aristocracy came to spend the cold season there for the mildness of the climate; it was they who financed the first path along the shore, which became the Promenade des Anglais. The Russians followed, with their court and their cathedral. The season then ran from autumn to spring, summer was avoided. We look at this history from 107 Promenade des Anglais, where the house has been established since 1999.
Why did the English come to Nice in winter?
At the end of the 18th century, northern European winters were treated in the south. English doctors prescribed the mildness of the Mediterranee to their wealthy patients, and Nice, then a town in the kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, became one of their preferred addresses. The writer Tobias Smollett, who stayed there and published an account of it, helped make the town known across the Channel. People came, quite literally, to breathe: the climate was the argument, before the sea.
An English colony settled, with its customs, its church, its bookshops. The Croix de Marbre quarter, on the right bank of the Paillon, was nicknamed little London. These visitors did not bathe, or rarely: the sea was looked at, it was not yet experienced. One walked, one received, one spent the winter. That is what the word winter visitor means, and it is what made the town.
Where does the name Promenade des Anglais come from?
At the beginning of the 19th century, the English colony financed the construction of a path along the shore, west of the Paillon. The initiative is traditionally attributed to the Reverend Lewis Way, who wished to provide work for the poorest after a difficult winter, whilst offering winter visitors a place to walk facing the sea. The people of Nice called this path the camin dei Inglés, the path of the English. The name remained.
The path was widened, extended and planted throughout the 19th century, until it became the avenue we know. One must consider what this says: the best-known road in Nice was designed neither for traffic nor for commerce, but for the slow pace of winter visitors. We have been working at 107 on this avenue since 1999; one never quite grows accustomed to the idea that the pavement beneath our windows was first a work of English charity.
Who were the Russian winter visitors?
After the English came the Russians. In the 19th century, the aristocracy and the imperial court adopted the habit of spending winter on the Cote d'Azur, and Nice became one of their chosen towns. Russian was spoken in its drawing rooms, churches were built there; the Orthodox cathedral of Saint-Nicolas, consecrated at the beginning of the 20th century, remains the most visible evidence of this, one of the principal Orthodox buildings outside Russia.
It was also for these winter visitors, English, Russian and soon American, that the Belle Epoque built its grand hotels: the Negresco on the Promenade, the Excelsior Régina at Cimiez, erected to accommodate the visits of Queen Victoria. These buildings were not summer hotels. Their drawing rooms, their winter gardens, their orientations tell of a season that ran from autumn to spring.
What remains of this period?
Almost everything, if one knows how to look. The Belle Epoque façades of the Promenade and Cimiez, the cathedral of Saint-Nicolas, the Anglican church, the street and hotel names. And a reversal: in the 20th century, with paid holidays and a new taste for sunshine, the season inverted. Nice, a winter town, became a summer destination. Those who fled July gave way to those who seek it.
From our windows at 107, winter remains nonetheless the season most faithful to the origin of the avenue. The light is low and clear, the sea takes on a pewter grey, the Promenade returns to the walkers for whom it was built. This is perhaps the advice this history offers to those who wish to understand Nice: come also in January.
Frequently asked questions
- What is a winter visitor?
- A visitor who came to spend the cold season in the south, generally from autumn to spring. In the 18th and 19th centuries, English then Russian winter visitors shaped Nice, its urban planning, its hotels, its churches.
- Why is the Promenade des Anglais called that?
- Because the English colony in Nice financed, at the beginning of the 19th century, the construction of the first path along the shore. The people of Nice called it the path of the English; the name remained when the path became an avenue.
- When did the season take place in Nice?
- From autumn to spring. Until the beginning of the 20th century, people came to Nice for its mild winter and left before summer, considered too hot. Summer tourism is a later phenomenon.
- Why is there a Russian cathedral in Nice?
- The Russian aristocracy and imperial court spent their winters in Nice in the 19th century. The Orthodox cathedral of Saint-Nicolas, consecrated at the beginning of the 20th century, was built for this community and remains one of the principal Orthodox buildings outside Russia.
- When did Nice become a summer destination?
- During the 20th century, when the taste for sunshine and sea bathing, then paid holidays, inverted the season. The winter town of the aristocrats became the summer town we know.
References
Districts
The author
Garen AjderhanyanEditor of La Gazette de la Promenade
Editor of La Gazette de la Promenade. He writes on Riviera property and the art of living, from Nice.