The guide · by Metro Mode
Menton
The last town before Italy: a Genoese-looking old town, lemons and winter gardens
Menton has always been a frontier town, and today it is the last before Ventimiglia. Charles Grimaldi, Lord of Monaco, acquired it in 1346, and the princes of Monaco ruled it until the Revolution. In 1848 Menton and its neighbour Roquebrune broke away over a tax on lemon exports and proclaimed themselves free cities; after the Treaty of Turin of 1860 and the plebiscite, they became French, and the Prince of Monaco renounced his rights on 2 February 1861.
In 1861 an English doctor, James Henry Bennett, published Winter and Spring on the Shores of the Mediterranean, and Menton became a winter refuge for sufferers of tuberculosis. British and Russian visitors built the hotels, villas and gardens that still define its hillsides – the Winter Palace, the Riviera Palace, a Russian church of 1892 and some of the finest gardens on the coast.
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The old town climbs in tiers from the sea to the baroque Basilica of Saint-Michel; the Roman Via Julia Augusta ran along what is now the Rue Longue. Jean Cocteau left his mark on the Bastion by the harbour and on the town hall's wedding room. The lemon is the town's emblem, celebrated each February at the Fête du Citron.
Highlights
- Restaurant · Three MICHELIN starsMirazurThree Michelin stars above the Garavan bay, thirty metres from the Italian border
- Place of worshipÉglise russeHans-Georg Tersling's Russian Orthodox church of 1892, for the town's Russian invalids
- MuseumMusée Jean Cocteau - Collection Severin WundermanRudy Ricciotti's seafront museum for Cocteau, closed since the 2018 storm
- MuseumMusée Jean Cocteau - Le BastionThe seventeenth-century harbour fort that Cocteau turned into his own museum
- MuseumPalais CarnolèsThe Grimaldi princes' summer trianon of 1717–1725, now the fine-arts museum
- GardenJardin botanique du Val RahmehA botanical garden of some 1,500 taxa on the Garavan slopes, begun in 1905
- CastleDomaine des ColombièresFerdinand Bac's Mediterranean synthesis of house and gardens above Garavan, from 1920
- Listed buildingFontana RosaThe Garavan estate of the novelist Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, from 1922
- ManorHôtel Winter PalaceAlbert Tournaire's 220-room winter palace of 1901, now apartments
- Listed buildingSerre de la MadoneLawrence Johnston's terraced garden on the heights of Menton, from 1924
- Place of worshipBasilique Saint-Michel-ArchangeMenton's baroque basilica above its stepped square, begun in 1619
- ParkJardin d'Agrumes du Palais CarnolèsThe prince's garden of 1725, now Europe's largest citrus collection
Five-star hotels
- Hotel Villa Genesis30 rooms
Lists & itineraries
Everything, by kind
Sources
- Wikipedia (en): Menton
- Wikipédia (fr) : Église russe de Menton
- Wikipédia (fr) : Hôtel Winter-Palace (Menton)
- OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL)
- Wikidata
- INSEE IRIS / IGN (Licence Ouverte 2.0)