Overview
Once a small fishing port, Cannes became a fashionable winter resort in the nineteenth century and is now a byword for Riviera glamour, its bay filled with yachts and its promenade with luxury hotels. For most of the year it is simply a pleasant seaside town with good beaches and a genuine old quarter above the port, busiest and most star-studded during the film festival each May. The islands offshore and the hill villages behind add quieter days to the resort.
Highlights
La Croisette runs along the seafront past the grand hotels, the beaches and the festival hall with its handprints of the stars. The old town of Le Suquet climbs to a castle and church with a view over the bay, and the market and port fill the mornings. A short boat trip reaches the Lérins Islands, where Sainte-Marguerite keeps forests, coves and the fort of the Man in the Iron Mask.