Èze

Interesting facts

A hoard of ancient Greek silver offering bowls from the 3rd century BC was found at Èze in the late 19th century and is now in the British Museum.

The Antonine Itinerary, a Roman route guide, records the bay below the village as Avisionis portus.

Moors held the area for about 80 years until William of Provence drove them out in 973.

The village motto is Isis Moriendo Renascor, 'In dying I am reborn', and its emblem is a phoenix perched on a bone.

According to local tradition, an Egyptian cross in the parish church recalls a temple to the goddess Isis said to have stood here in antiquity.

The White Penitents who met in the 1306 chapel cared for victims of plague, and its bell-turret is said to show a Genoese influence.

Walt Disney visited in 1956, dined at the Château de la Chèvre d'Or, and is said to have encouraged its owner to turn it into a hotel.

The local dialect, now nearly extinct, is close to the Monégasque of neighbouring Monaco and belongs to the Ligurian family.

The vote of April 1860 to join France was unanimous among the people of Èze.

Traditionally the coastline of the Principality of Monaco was considered to begin at Èze and run east to Menton.

Why it is worth it

Èze clings to a rock pinnacle above the Riviera like a bird's nest, about 427 m above the sea it looks down on. The medieval village is a knot of stone houses, vaulted passages and stepped lanes too narrow for anything but feet, wound tightly around a summit where a castle once stood. There are few places on this coast where the old defensive logic of a perched village is so easy to read: the houses form the wall, the lanes climb in spirals, and every gap between buildings frames a slice of blue far below.

The site has been fought over for most of its history. It passed to the House of Savoy in 1388; in 1543 Franco-Ottoman forces under Hayreddin Barbarossa took it; and in 1706, during the War of the Spanish Succession, Louis XIV had the castle and walls pulled down. The inhabitants voted in 1860 to join France. What survives from before those upheavals is small and precious - the chapel of the Holy Cross, known as the chapel of the White Penitents, is the oldest building in the village, dating from 1306. The parish church of Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption, built in 1764 and a listed historic monument, was rebuilt on the site of an older church.

At the summit, in the ruins of the castle, the exotic garden turns the top of the rock into a terrace of cacti, aloes and agaves. The mayor André Gianton began it in 1949, with help from Jean Gastaud, the creator of Monaco's exotic garden; stones and plants were carried up by hand to build the terraces. Among the succulents stand pale terracotta female figures by the sculptor Jean-Philippe Richard, placed there in the 2000s, and from the top the view drops more than 400 m straight to the sea and runs far along the coast.

Below the village, a steep path zigzags down through pine and scrub to the hamlet of Èze-sur-Mer. It carries the name of Friedrich Nietzsche, who lived in Nice, and tradition holds that walking it helped him shape the third part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Climbing it from the shore is a stiff ascent, and the most rewarding way to arrive.

Getting there

Èze is about 5 km from Monaco and about 14 km from Nice-Côte d'Azur Airport (NCE). The railway station of Èze-sur-Mer, on the Marseille-Ventimiglia line, is served by regional TER trains; from there the Nietzsche path climbs to the village. Buses of the Lignes d'Azur network run up from Nice, and the village lies on the Moyenne Corniche road.

From the encyclopaedia

Èze is a seaside commune in the Alpes-Maritimes department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in Southeastern France. It is located on the French Riviera, 8.5 km (5.2 mi) to the northeast of Nice and 4.5 km (2.7 mi) to the west of Monaco. As of 2023, Èze had 2,144 inhabitants known as Ezasques in French.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

On these lists

From the encyclopaedia