The French Riviera

In winter, Stéphen Liégeard stayed in Cannes and enjoyed exploring the region. A friend, the academician Xavier Marmier, encouraged him to write an account of his stays in the south. In 1887, he did just that! Indeed, at his estate in Brochon, he wrote his most famous work, *La Côte d'Azur * (The French Riviera). In this book, he describes the towns and sites, from Marseille to Genoa, "of this sun-drenched shore that deserves our christening of Côte d'Azur." To coin this term, Liégeard, a native of Burgundy, drew inspiration from the name of the Côte-d'Or department.

"The French Riviera! Thus, from the Château d'If to the palaces of Genoa, the land of the blue sea, sun, and flowers is now called... The dictionary has gained a word."

But where exactly is the French Riviera?

For Stéphen Liégeard, in his book, the French Riviera stretches from Marseille to Genoa: "from the Château d'If to the palaces of Genoa".

Nowadays, some sources limit it to the west, to the town of Cassis and to the east, to Menton. In this case, it covers the entire coastline of the Var and Alpes-Maritimes departments and part of that of Bouches-du-Rhône.

Tourist guides place it in Bandol, limiting the French Riviera to the coastline of the Var and Alpes-Maritimes departments. Some websites even place it at the city of Hyères. Other sources, however, limit it in practice to Saint-Tropez.

Finally, the official Côte d'Azur tourism website restricts the name "Côte d'Azur" to a large coastal strip in the Alpes-Maritimes department.