Cannes

Cannes curves round its bay between the red rocks of the Esterel to the west and the Golfe-Juan to the east, with the Lérins Islands lying off its point. The town began on the Suquet, a 66-metre hill above the old port: its name comes from the Ligurian Canoa, «height», and for centuries it belonged to the monks of Lérins, who built the tower and the castle that still crown it.

It stayed a fishing village until the nineteenth century. Lord Brougham, the former Lord Chancellor, settled here in the 1830s and drew the English and European aristocracy after him; their winter villas, and from the early twentieth century the palace hotels of the Croisette, make up the town's architectural heritage.