Nice, France

The Promenade des Anglais runs the full length of Nice's Baie des Anges beachfront — worth knowing ahead of time that the beach itself is pebble, not sand, which changes what to pack more than it changes the appeal. Vieux Nice, the old town just behind the promenade, holds a daily flower and produce market and a genuinely dense cluster of narrow, shaded streets that's easy to spend a morning in.

Nice sits within easy day-trip range of an unusual number of distinct destinations: Monaco by a thirty-minute train, the hilltop village of Èze for a different kind of Riviera view, and Cannes further down the coast — a cluster of options that few other single bases on this list can match.

Seasonal nonstop service runs from New York in summer; outside that window, most itineraries connect through Paris. May through June and September bring the same coastline with far fewer crowds and lower prices than July and August's peak season.

Nice anchors the French Riviera and makes an easy base for day trips to Monaco, Cannes, and the hilltop villages of Èze and Saint-Paul-de-Vence, all within an hour by train or car. The Promenade des Anglais, a long seafront walkway lined with palm trees, captures the city's belle époque resort history, and Nice's old town (Vieux Nice) has a noticeably more Italian architectural and culinary influence than the rest of France, a legacy of the region's history as part of the Kingdom of Sardinia.

Three to four nights covers the city and at least one Riviera day trip. It suits travelers wanting a coastal base for exploring the wider French Riviera, and the regional train line makes day trips to Monaco and Cannes straightforward without a rental car.

Getting there: About 9-10h, nonstop from New York in summer (seasonal), otherwise a connection through Paris. We compare that routing against the alternatives before booking, and help plan the trip's dates around May to June, or September (shoulder season).

Nice changed hands between France and the Kingdom of Sardinia (based in what's now Italy) repeatedly over centuries before a popular vote finally attached it to France permanently in 1860, and that Italian-adjacent history is still audible in the local Niçard dialect and visible in the city's pastel Italianate architecture, distinct from the more uniform Haussmannian style found in Paris. The Promenade des Anglais, the city's famous seafront walkway, is named for the wealthy English aristocrats and writers who began wintering in Nice in the 18th and 19th centuries specifically for its mild climate, funding the promenade's construction themselves in 1820s — meaning Nice's identity as a resort town for the wealthy predates the French Riviera's later Hollywood-glamour reputation by over a century. Niçoise cuisine is genuinely distinct from the rest of French cooking, closer in spirit to Ligurian Italian food given the region's history: socca (a thin chickpea-flour pancake cooked on a griddle, sold from street stalls), pissaladière (an onion tart topped with anchovies and olives, a close cousin of pizza), and the real salade niçoise, which locals insist never contains cooked green beans or potatoes despite how the dish is usually served abroad. The old town's Cours Saleya market, running daily except Mondays, remains the best single stop for both the produce and the flowers the region is known for.