Eze
Centuries passed but slowly here, and the Moorish hordes, seeking for a vantage-ground on the Ligurian coast, took the peak for their own. The early founders did not need to go afield for the material for the building of houses and their military constructions. It was all close at hand. The rocky base sufficed for all.
What is left to-day of the old bourg, remodelled and rebuilt in many cases, but still the original structures to no small extent, is a veritable museum of architectural curiosities.
What an accented note it is in the whole vast expanse of green and blue! It is literally worth coming miles to see, even if one makes the wearisome journey on foot.
Eze is sequestered from all the world, and, like Normandy’s Mont St. Michel, would be an ideal place in which to shut oneself up if one wanted to escape from his enemies (and friends).
The shrine of Notre Dame de Laghet lies in the country back of Eze, but rather nearer to La Turbie. The whole south venerated Our Lady of Laghet in days gone by, and came to worship at her shrine. The neighbouring country is severe and less gracious than that of most of the flowering Riviera; but, in the early days of spring, with the hardier blossoms well forward, it is as delightful an environment for a shrine as one can well expect to find.
Historic souvenirs in connection with Notre Dame de Laghet are many. The Duc de Savoie, Victor Amédée, came here to worship in 1689, and a century and a half later, his descendant, Charles Albert, shorn of his crown, and a fugitive, sought shelter here from the dangers which beset him. Here he knelt devoutly before the Madonna, and prayed that his enemies might be forgiven. A tablet to-day memorializes the event.
The little church of the establishment contains hundreds of votive offerings left by pious pilgrims, and, though architecturally the edifice is a poor, humble thing, it ranks high among the places of modern pilgrimage.
A kilometre beyond the gardens which face the Casino at Monte Carlo is a little winding road leading blindly up the hillside. “Où conduit-il?” you ask of a straggler; “A La Turbie, m’sieu;” and forthwith you mount, spurning the aid of the funiculaire farther down the road. When one has progressed a hundred metres along this serpentine roadway, the whole ensemble of beauties with which one has become familiar at the coast are magnified and enhanced beyond belief. Nowhere is there a gayer, livelier colouring to be seen on the Riviera; this in spite of the conventionality of the glistening walls of the great hotels and the artificial gardens with which the vicinity of the paradise of Monte Carlo abounds.
As one turns another hairpin corner, another plane of the horizon opens out until, after passing various isolated small houses, and zigzagging upward another couple of kilometres, he enters upon the “Route d’Italie,” and thence either turns to the left to La Turbie, or to the right to Roquebrune, a half-dozen kilometres farther on.