The Hidden Riviera

The pre-Alps and mountains of the southeastern corner of France are frequently dismissed by travel writers and visitors as little more than a backdrop to the prestigious coastal shoreline, the Côte d’Azur. This is understandable as the grey-blue mountains appear forbidding and empty while the coastal strip is immediately attractive and even glamorous. And, although it has problems arising from mass tourism, this particular coastline contains little of the detritus that characterizes so many other parts of the Mediterranean today. But once penetrated, the arrière pays and the mountains beyond reveal a fascinating world of astonishing variety: isolated valleys and villages, grandiose and austere scenery, the pathways of great historical figures, all taking us back in time. This is a part of France that a contemporary historian has described as a land where the past did not move seamlessly into the future and ‘as a world of ancient tribes and huge vacant spaces.’ Diversity is the rule and homogeneity the exception in most of rural France. Moreover much of France outside Paris remained little known to foreign and even French visitors for many years. Small, self-contained communities-or pays-whose universe often extended no further than 20 kilometers retained their secrets well, even including such splendid features as the Canyon of the Verdon and Bronze Age engravings in the Mercantour National Park. In many respects, then, regional France is an explorer’s paradise and the short journeys described in this book were stimulated by an urge to find out more about a part of this hidden area, so close to one of the best known tourist attractions in the world. They uncovered many surprises ranging from the unspoilt purity of the mountains, their gorges, flora and fauna to dozens of medieval villages and tiny picturesque chapels with hidden treasures. The latter were of particular interest; for example the fifteenth century frescoes in the tiny Notre-Dame-des Fontaines near La Brigue, in the even smaller Chapelle St-Antoine near Clans and in the Chapelle des Pénitents-Blancs at La Tour, the striking colors in the Romanesque Collegiate Notre-Dame-de-L’Assomption in Tende and the oddity of Notre-Dame de Brusc near Valbonne where, until quite recently, it was believed that the patron saint could bring rain so the worshippers always carried an umbrella when they came to church. As elsewhere in the Mediterranean there is no escape from history: In fact places whether they be man-made or natural can only be understood in their historical context. Fortunately the Mediterranean environment is supremely evocative and brings place and space together in a unique manner. As the great historian, Fernand Braudel expressed it in his Memory and the Mediterranean : ‘this is a sea that patiently recreates for us scenes from the past, breathing new life into them, locating them under a sky and in a landscape that we can see with our own eyes, a landscape and sky like those of long ago. A moment’s concentration or daydreaming, and that past comes back to life.’