Mandelieu-la-Napoule

Mandelieu-la-Napoule lies at the south-west end of the Alpes-Maritimes on the bay of Cannes, ringed to the west by the Esterel and Tanneron ranges. The Siagne crosses the east of the town north to south on its alluvial plain, and south of its mouth rises the volcanic cone of the San Peyre, 131 metres high. The name joins two communes merged in 1836; La Napoule, from the Greek for new town, first appears in a deed of 1134.

On the rocks by the sea the counts of Villeneuve built the château of La Napoule in the fourteenth century, after the older castle on the San Peyre was destroyed in 1387. In 1891 Grand Duke Michael Mikhailovich of Russia created the Old Course in the pine wood by the Siagne, the golf links of the Cannes winter colony.