Riviera Towns

by Herbert Adams Gibbons

From the moment the French entered Algiers at the beginning of the July Monarchy, they felt that their claim to the gratitude of the Riverains justified the annexation of a portion of the Riviera. The treaty that extended French sovereignty to beyond Menton was signed at Villefranche, and immediately the little harbor was transformed into a French naval port. Until warships became floating fortresses Villefranche was useful to France. Now it sees only torpedo-boats and destroyers, and the lack of direct communication with the interior has prevented its commercial development. Better an artificial breakwater with no Alps behind than a natural harbor with a Cap Ferrat.

Occasionally a huge ocean liner, chartered by an American tourist agency for an Eastern Mediterranean tour, drops into Villefranche roadstead. These chance visits, to give the tourists a day at Nice and Monte Carlo, demonstrate that Villefranche could be a port of call for the leviathans, commercial and naval, of the twentieth century. How much easier it would be to go to the Riviera directly from London and New York, instead of having a wearisome train journey added to the ocean voyage! But freights pay a large part of passenger rates, and the routing from great port to great port is as rigid and unalterable as the fact that a straight line is not the shortest distance between two points on land. Trains and ships must pass by way of great centers of population.

A naval cemetery is the memorial of Villefranche's naval past in the last brilliant decade of the Second Empire and the early years of the Third Republic. A little American corner, which our Paris Memorial Day Committee never forgets, bears witness to the period when the American flag was known everywhere in the Mediterranean. We used to have the lion's share of the carrying trade, and Villefranche was a frequent port of call for American warships. Now we have rarely even single warships or freighters in the Mediterranean. The only American passenger line that serves Mediterranean ports is the old Turkish Hadji Daoud Line of five small and dirty Levantine ships, which ply along the coast of Asia Minor and in and out of the Greek islands, camouflaged under our flag.

The old town of Villefranche is on the western side of the harbor between the Petite Corniche and the water. Like all Riviera towns on a main road it has grown rapidly and medieval streets and buildings have almost disappeared, giving way to the banal architecture of the end of the nineteenth century. The garish brick villas of the head of the gulf are excrescences in their lovely garden setting. But after one has reached the eastern side of the harbor and gone through Font Saint Jean, the tramway road, with its noise and dust and variegated bourgeois fantasies, can be abandoned.

Medieval streets and buildings have almost disappeared.

If we except Cap Martin, no Riviera walks are lovelier than those of Cap Ferrat. On the Villefranche side, until you have passed through Saint Jean, the alternative to the tramway road is an inhospitable though tantalizing lane. For large estates, shut off by walls and hedges, are between you and the harbor. Unless you are lucky enough to know one of the owners, you will not see the harbor of Villefranche from the best of the lower vantage points. This side of Villefranche is so sheltered that one resident, an American, has been able to transform his garden into a bit of old Japan where the cherry trees blossom in Nippon profusion and colors.

It is best to pass across the cape, not turning in at the tramway bifurcation, until you reach the Promenade Maurice-Rouvier, which skirts the Anse des Fourmis along the sea from Beaulieu to Saint Jean. After you have reached Saint Jean the peninsula is before you. A maze of superb roads tempt you, circling the fort several hundred feet above sea level, crossing the peninsula on the slopes of the fort, and following the sea. Returning to Saint Jean, there is still another walk directly ahead of you to the east. The Cap du Saint Hospice is pine-clad, with a sixteenth-century tower at its end.

The Artist and I made a mistake of twelve hours in our visit to Saint Hospice. We should have come in the morning for the sunrise. To remedy the error we decided to spend the night at the Hôtel du Pare Saint Jean. But the sun got up long before we did.