French Riviera Garden & Art Tour

Arrive in Nice and settle into Sheraton Nice Airport for the first night of the tour. Today gives you time to rest after your journey before we begin exploring tomorrow. Nice is our arrival point; after the first garden day we move east to Menton, where we will stay for the remainder of the tour.

This evening, join your tour director and fellow travellers for a welcome dinner at the hotel. It is a chance to get acquainted and hear how the week’s gardens and art visits fit together. Some guests will be particularly interested in plants, others in design or painting. That range of interests brings different observations to the conversation and is part of the pleasure of travelling in a small group.

Our first garden visit takes us to Villa Fort France, on a hillside near Grasse. Created around 1930 by the British writer Winifred Fortescue, whose book Perfume from Provence appeared in 1935, the garden has continued to develop under Pierre and Valérie de Courcel. Valérie’s work as a painter is reflected in a garden where plants are chosen for their contribution to colour, shape and atmosphere.

An axial stair connects a series of terraces rising towards the house. As we move between them, the firm lines of steps and retaining walls provide a framework for varied planting, with views towards the surrounding hills. It is a useful place to begin thinking about garden composition: how one plant sets off another, how a change in level alters the view, and how smaller spaces can form a coherent whole.

We continue to Grasse and the Fragonard perfume house. Here, the interest moves from the appearance of plants to their fragrance and the methods used to capture it. At the historic factory, the account of perfume production includes distillation and enfleurage, a traditional process in which flowers release their scent into fat. Different materials call for different techniques, particularly when heat would damage a delicate fragrance.

The visit brings a practical dimension to something gardeners know through experience: scent has its own character, intensity and season. Learning how fragrances are extracted and combined gives us another way to appreciate plants, beyond their visual role in a border. It also connects the gardens with a craft closely associated with Grasse.

After our visits, we travel to Menton and settle into Hôtel Prince de Galles. This is our base for the next seven nights, with dinner included this evening.

Today we explore Picasso’s work in two settings closely connected with his time on the Riviera. We begin in Vallauris at the Musée National Pablo Picasso, where La Guerre et la Paix occupies the Romanesque chapel of the former priory. Picasso made the two large panels in 1952. Their scale and their relationship to the curved interior make this a different experience from viewing a painting hung in a conventional gallery.

The paired subjects invite us to follow the movement of figures and symbols across the work: the violence of war and the possibilities of peaceful life. Standing within the chapel, we can consider how a composition surrounds the viewer and how an existing building can acquire a new purpose through art. This attention to enclosure and movement will also be useful in the gardens ahead.

We then continue to Antibes and its Provençal market. The change of setting brings us into the everyday life of the town, with produce and regional food taking the place of museum collections. There is time to look around and arrange your own lunch before the afternoon visit.

At the Musée Picasso, the Château Grimaldi provides a second encounter with the artist. Picasso worked here during the autumn of 1946, using part of the building as a studio and leaving a group of paintings and drawings in Antibes. The collection also includes ceramics made in Vallauris, linking the afternoon with our morning visit.

Seeing the work where it was made gives the building a particular interest. We can look at the paintings and ceramics as individual objects, then consider the experience of working in a castle beside the Mediterranean. The terrace and the sea beyond provide a pause after the galleries. We return to Menton for dinner, carrying a different kind of observation into the next garden day.

We begin in Menton’s town hall at the Salle des Mariages, decorated by Jean Cocteau in 1957–58. Here, drawing and colour become part of a room used for an important moment in people’s lives. Seeing the work within that setting encourages us to look at the space as a whole, including the way decoration relates to the walls and ceiling.

At Jardin Botanique Val Rahmeh-Menton, we turn to a collection cared for by France’s Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle. Mediterranean trees and citrus grow alongside plants from subtropical and tropical regions. The layout responds to exposure and soil drainage, placing plants in conditions that support their needs. This is a garden in which the setting helps explain the planting.

Arabian coffee, Chilean palms and other plants broaden the familiar Mediterranean palette. Older olive trees preserve a connection with the site’s earlier landscape, while the collections serve botanical study and conservation. Among them is Sophora toromiro, a shrub from Easter Island that is extinct in the wild. Its presence makes the conservation role tangible: a garden can hold living material whose importance extends beyond its ornamental appeal.

The afternoon garden visit will be either Clos du Peyronnet or Serre de la Madone, according to the final arrangements.

At Clos du Peyronnet, successive generations of the Waterfield family developed an Arts and Crafts garden where terraces, pergolas and planted spaces draw on a sheltered position above the sea. A sequence of five pools leads down the hillside, making water part of the garden’s composition. Some views turn inward; others borrow the sea and neighbouring landscape. The result brings together botanical interest and a strong sense of design, with changes between enclosed planting and more formal spaces.

Alternatively, Serre de la Madone introduces the Riviera garden of Lawrence Johnston, the creator of Hidcote in England. Begun in 1924, it combines a collector’s interest in plants with terraces, controlled perspectives and quieter open spaces. Existing Mediterranean vegetation became part of the setting for introductions gathered through Johnston’s travels. The garden also offers a chance to consider restoration: how paths, views and planting can be cared for while retaining the character of a deeply personal creation.

We return to our hotel for dinner. If Serre de la Madone is not visited today, there may be an opportunity on Day 6, subject to scheduling.

We travel into the hills to Fondation Maeght, near Saint-Paul-de-Vence. Architect Josep Lluís Sert worked with the Maeght family and artists to create a place where buildings, outdoor spaces and works of art were conceived together. The visit moves between galleries, courtyards, terraces and a sculpture garden, with the changing setting influencing how we see the work.

The Giacometti Court and Miró’s labyrinth are central to that experience. Miró’s works bring ceramics, stone, metal and other materials into a space made in collaboration with Sert and the ceramicists Josep Llorens Artigas and his son Joan. Rather than treating the exterior as a route between rooms, we can look at it as part of the collection itself: a place where the distance between objects, their surroundings and the visitor’s movement all matter.

For garden visitors, this is an absorbing comparison with planting design. An open space gives a sculpture room to be seen; a change of direction reveals a new relationship. The same questions arise when we place a tree, frame a view or decide where a path should lead. You can enjoy the individual works while also observing the composition around them.

There is time in Saint-Paul-de-Vence before we continue to Vence and the Chapelle du Rosaire. Designed by Matisse for the Dominican sisters, the chapel brings blue, green and yellow stained glass into a white interior. The colour changes the experience of the room through light, while the line drawings provide a different, restrained presence. The associated museum space includes preparatory works and liturgical garments designed by the artist.

After the varied outdoor spaces of Maeght, the chapel draws our attention to a smaller number of elements and the relationships between them. It is a thoughtful conclusion to a day concerned with how an artist shapes an entire setting. We return to Menton for dinner.

We cross into Italy to visit Giardini Botanici Hanbury at La Mortola. Thomas Hanbury bought the property in 1867 after a business career in China and began developing a garden with the help of his brother Daniel and other botanical specialists. Its coastal slope provided a setting for plants brought from different parts of the world.

The garden we see today reflects more than one period of development. Thomas’s botanical collecting was followed by changes under Cecil and Dorothy Hanbury, who placed greater emphasis on the appearance of the garden and on native plants. That history makes the visit particularly interesting: we can consider the requirements of a collection alongside the choices that turn it into a landscape to experience on foot.

The paths connect areas of planting and more composed spaces as they lead down the slope. Changes of level alter both the view and our relationship to the plants. Some are appreciated close at hand, others as part of a canopy or a larger group. Looking across the garden, then returning to an individual specimen, gives a sense of how botanical detail and landscape design work together.

We continue inland to Dolceacqua for an included lunch and time in the village. The single-arched bridge over the Nervia and the castle above the old town form the view that attracted Claude Monet during his visit in 1884. After the morning’s garden, the village offers another way to think about composition: the span of the bridge, the hillside buildings and the river combine into a scene with a clear structure.

If Serre de la Madone was not visited on Day 4, a visit may be arranged this afternoon if scheduling permits. It remains conditional; the programme does not promise visits to both Menton garden alternatives. We return to Hôtel Prince de Galles for dinner.

At Jardin Exotique de Monaco, the steep setting gives the planting an immediate presence. The garden, opened in 1933, brings together succulents on a cliff above the principality. Cacti are a major part of the collection, their varied forms setting upright stems, branching shapes and rounded masses against rock and the coastal view.

The interest extends beyond recognising individual plants. From one viewpoint the planting reads as a composition of silhouettes; from another, the differences in surface, scale and growth habit become apparent. It is a useful garden for considering how a limited range of strongly defined forms can produce considerable variety. Gardeners from cooler or wetter climates may choose different plants, but the ideas of contrast, repetition and proportion are transferable.

The published programme also includes the Observatory Cave beneath the garden. This guided visit brings us into a different environment, with mineral formations replacing the living forms above ground. The cave adds a separate physical challenge to the day through its steps and descent; please discuss suitability with us if that is a concern.

We continue to Monaco-Ville, the old town on the Rock, for time among its streets and views. This part of the day offers a change from the concentrated garden visit and an opportunity to arrange your own lunch.

If time permits, we also visit the Musée Matisse in Nice. The museum occupies a seventeenth-century Genoese villa in Cimiez, with a collection connected to Matisse’s long association with the city. Seen after the chapel in Vence, it would add context to his work across different media. This visit is conditional and should not be the sole reason for choosing the tour. Dinner is included back in Menton.

Our final full day brings us to Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild on Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. The rose-coloured villa and its nine gardens offer an opportunity to bring together the week’s observations about plants, art and composition. Here, the pleasure comes from moving between contrasting spaces and considering how they form a larger whole.

The French garden establishes a central arrangement of parterres, water and views, with trees and clipped planting contributing to its framework. Around it, the Spanish, Florentine, Sèvres, stone, Japanese, exotic, Provençal and rose gardens introduce different materials, plant forms and atmospheres. Water and scented planting in the Spanish garden provide one kind of experience; the architectural presence of succulents in the exotic garden provides another.

As we walk, we can look at how one garden leads into the next and how the sea enters the composition. A formal axis directs the eye differently from an enclosed space or a path that reveals its destination gradually. The comparison with earlier visits is rewarding: the private scale of Fort France, the botanical purpose of Val Rahmeh and Hanbury, and the outdoor art at Maeght have each given us something to bring to this garden.

The villa’s art collections add another part of the estate’s character. Lunch here is included, giving us a pause within the visit and time to talk about what we have seen.

If the venue is open and scheduling permits, the afternoon may include Villa Santo Sospir, where Jean Cocteau’s drawings extend across the interior of a house. His work developed over successive visits, turning the building into a setting inseparable from the images. This would make a connection with the Salle des Mariages seen earlier in the week. Alternatively, the programme provides free time in Nice. Santo Sospir is not a guaranteed visit.

We return to Menton for our final night. Dinner is at your own arrangement this evening.

After breakfast, prepare for departure from Hôtel Prince de Galles in Menton. Hotel checkout is by noon; your departure time may be earlier according to the airport transfer arrangements.

The published programme provides a transfer to Nice Airport. Final joining information will need to specify its timing and any opportunity for time in Nice before departure. Guests extending their stay can make their onward plans around those arrangements.

The week has brought together gardens made for different purposes, from personal expression to botanical conservation, with art experienced in chapels, galleries and outdoor spaces. Alongside photographs and plant notes, you may take home a new way of looking at a garden: the value of a well-placed opening, the relationship between contrasting forms, or the contribution of a view beyond the boundary.