History & heritage
Most of what matters here sits a few miles back from the water. Grasse is the old capital of French perfumery, and in 2018 UNESCO added the perfume know-how of the Pays de Grasse to its intangible heritage list: growing the flowers, treating the raw materials, composing the scent. Fragonard still works out of an eighteenth-century building with copper stills. The town smells of it. Picasso bought a farmhouse below the chapel of Notre Dame de Vie at Mougins in 1961 and died there twelve years later, which tells you something about what the light does to painters. Matisse decorated the Chapelle du Rosaire at Vence. Saint Paul de Vence, a few minutes on, holds the Fondation Maeght and a great deal of Giacometti. Cannes is a working port with a film festival attached, and out of season it behaves like one.
