Nice is nice - and keen to celebrate 150 years of Frenchness

Feb 16, 2010, 12:15 GMT

Nice, France - Not a lot of visitors to the Cote d'Azur know this: The County of Nizza used to belong to Italy and only became French territory in 1860. Since then the fifth largest city in France has become known the world over as Nice.

Many residents have Italian-sounding names and the term for and consistency of the local food speciality has not changed either. Socca is an inexpensive pancake made of chickpea flour and olive oil, baked in a wood-fired oven and generously coated with black peppers. It is eaten while piping hot.

For the Nicois, as the people who live around here are known, the ideal wine to douse this fiery speciality is a local Rose.

Celebrations to mark the 150th anniversary of Nice's cession to France are set to continue throughout 2010, with such an action-packed programme that there was no way to shoehorn in a much-vaunted major exhibition in honour of 75-year-old actress Brigitte Bardot.

'It is to be a festival of community spirit and one for local citizens as well,' announced Christian Estrosi as he unveiled 150 individual projects.

The celebrations are designed to galvanise 350,000 city dwellers to roll up their sleeves, seek out and chat with their previously unknown neighbours and spruce up their districts to give them the rustic charm of yore.

Other ideas include establishing networks to help disadvantaged citizens or improving the environment and boosting ecological sustainability. The official agenda reaches its climax in June with a range of cultural and sports events. Tourists from all over the world are expected to attend.

The union with France is being feted as the result of a legitimate referendum in the course of which more than 99 per cent of those eligible to vote were in favour of Nice being ceded to France. Modern historians argue that the plebiscite was rigged.

They claim it was a trade-off for the realisation of national hero Giuseppe Garibaldi's dream of unifying Italy and a sign of Italy's gratitude for French support during the war against Austria.

French control over Nice was certainly the catalyst for an unprecedented economic boom and the resort later became a modern European tourist metropolis. Today the city boasts an efficient tram network which makes it easy to explore with public transport and is the undisputed capital of the Cote d'Azur. It has countless museums, indeed only Paris has proportionally more.

Nice is famed for its broad boulevards such as the Promenade des Anglais and the swathe of gorgeous beach along the Mediterranean bay continues to act as a strong magnet. The area around the Avenue Jean Medecin in the romantic old quarter of the city has morphed into a sophisticated shopping venue and when the carnival season arrives (February 12 to 28) hotel rooms in the city are firstly, only to be had at a premium, and secondly, usually booked-out.

Many wealthy and famous people took to spending the winter in and around Nice and still do today. The city has attracted many notables, the English, Americans and Germans prominent among them. F Scott Fitzgerald lived here as did composer Hector Berlioz and painter Henri Matisse. One famous contemporary resident is Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards.

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) spent five winters in Nice and enjoyed vigorous walks in the mountains at Eze, to the east of city. The 'Nietzsche Path' is named after him. He was not only the prominent German who fled the harsh northern European winter.