$9.99City Highlights
Nice Audio Walking Tours
Self-guided, narrated walks through Nice. Buy a tour once, download it, and hear the story at each stop while you walk at your own pace.
Tours from $6.99
Friends walk free. One purchase covers everyone on your walk. Start the tour, invite your friends to join, and it plays on every phone in your group.
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Nice audio tours
Each tour is a mapped route with narration at every stop. Buy it once and it is yours to keep, no subscription.
$9.99City Highlights
$6.99City HighlightsWhat to expect on a Nice audio walking tour
A Nice audio walk winds down from Cimiez hill's palace hotels and olive groves past where Matisse and Chagall lived and worked, or loops through the old town's market square and up Castle Hill for the best view on the whole Riviera.
The Cimiez Hill Walk starts at the Franciscan monastery where Matisse is buried and runs almost entirely downhill, 4 kilometers, about 53 minutes, past the hotel built for Queen Victoria, a string of Belle Époque palaces and the museum Chagall helped design.
It finishes down in the city at the neo-Gothic Basilique Notre-Dame and the red and ochre facades of Place Masséna, a change of pace from the green quiet of the hill above.
The Old Town and Castle Walk is shorter, 1.7 kilometers, about 27 minutes, from the Promenade des Anglais past the Opéra and the flower stalls of Cours Saleya into the old town's lanes, finishing with a climb up Castle Hill for the view over the Baie des Anges and the old port.
Where to walk in Nice
A few of the stops you will pass, and why they are worth slowing down for.
The Old Port (Port Lympia)
Port Lympia is Nice's old harbor, a horseshoe of yachts, fishing boats and ferries tucked below the hillside villas on the far side of Castle Hill. The port has been here in some form for centuries, handling the trade that kept old Nice fed and supplied long before the seafront promenade existed. From above you can see how the breakwater curves to shelter the boats from the open sea, with pastel-colored buildings lining the quay and green hills rising steeply behind them. Ferries to Corsica still sail from here today, a working harbor as much as a pretty one, and it's one of the views every visitor to Castle Hill comes up for.
Place Masséna
Place Masséna is the great square at the center of Nice, framed by buildings painted deep red and ochre in the Italian style of Turin, from the years Nice still looked across the Alps rather than toward Paris. At its southern end stands the Fontaine du Soleil, a tall white Apollo surrounded by bronze figures of the planets, glowing pale against the evening sky. The square is named for André Masséna, a marshal of Napoleon's born in Nice, and its black and white checkerboard paving makes it instantly recognizable. Seven crouching figures on poles around the square light up and change color after dark, worth a second visit once the sun goes down.
Cours Saleya
Cours Saleya is the long, narrow square that serves as the living room of old Nice, filled most mornings with striped market awnings selling flowers, herbs, lemons, olives and local cheese. On Mondays the food stalls usually give way to antiques and bric-a-brac instead. The low buildings along the southern side were once fishermen's storehouses, their flat roofs now forming a terrace between the market and the shore. This is also the place to try socca, the thin, crispy chickpea pancake that's Nice's favorite street food, sold hot by the slice from stalls right along the square.
Castle Hill
Despite the name, there's no castle left on Castle Hill, just a shady park of pine trees, the ruins of an old cathedral and a man-made waterfall, all that remains after French troops demolished the fortress here in the early eighteenth century. What draws people up is the view: the whole Baie des Anges curving away to the west, the red roofs of the old town directly below, and the old port with its yachts on the other side. A cannon is still fired from the hill at noon each day, a tradition said to have started so one resident's wife would know it was time to come home for lunch. It's the one view in Nice that takes in the entire city at once.
The Cimiez Palace Hotels
Cimiez hill filled up with grand hotels like this one at the end of the nineteenth century, when it became the most fashionable winter address on the Riviera, drawing aristocrats, bankers and invalids from across Europe who came for the climate as much as the company. Doctors of the era recommended clean air and a little altitude above the damp of the seafront, and these hotels delivered both, with gardens, ballrooms and long views across the bay. Queen Victoria herself wintered nearby in the 1890s. Most are divided into private apartments today, so you admire the facades from the street, which is exactly where they were designed to be seen from.
Get the Audio Tour in 3 Simple Steps
All in the free Walk With Me app, and the first stops of every tour are free to try.
Tap the Gold Headphones and Pick a Tour
01
Walk It Solo or Invite Someone
02
Press Play and Walk
03
Handcrafted for Your Time in the City
These tours aren't a checklist of sights. They're made to be walked slowly, headphones on, eyes on the city.
Meditative and Immersive
Each story is told where it happened. The app chimes when you reach a stop, one tap starts the story, and the stretch between stops is yours to take in at your own pace.
Handcrafted With Care
We choose every route and every stop ourselves and shape each story with care, so the time you have in the city goes to the places most worth seeing.
Better With Someone
Every walk is better with someone beside you, so if you can bring a friend, we really hope you do. That's why one purchase covers everyone you invite: they join your tour free.