Putting the French Riviera on the map

“Oh, if only I were at Nice, I should recover," said Queen Victoria as she was dying.*

The Queen-Empress stayed in Menton on her first visit to the Riviera, with an excursion to the wicked Monte Carlo as she called it. But it was Nice that had the privilege to welcome the queen for the spring’s 1895 till 1899. When Queen Victoria repeatedly began to holiday at the Excelsior Régina Palace, Nice’s reputation was cemented as the place to spend a season. At the end of the American civil war word had hit America that Nice was the ultimate tourist destination and by 1900 one in every seven guests in hotels in Nice came from the USA. The Promenade des Anglais even got extended farther down the coast and the Americans were given their very own Quai des Etats-Unis.

*Queen Victoria and the Discovery of the Riviera, Michael Nelson

Photos courtesy of Alamy Stick photo and La phototheque de Jean Gilleta