Castle Hill (Colline du Château)

Parc de la Colline du Château

Free hilltop park with the whole bay on one side and the port on the other

Hours

Park 8:30am–6pm from 1 Oct to 31 Mar, 8:30am–8pm Apr–Sept (Nice tourist office). Lift hours: check on site (reports say it stops before the park closes)

Tickets

Free, lift included; the tourist petit train up the hill is paid

Address

The hill park east of the old town; the free lift is at the end of the Quai des États-Unis below the Tour Bellanda

There's no castle left, just the name. What you get instead, from viewpoints about 90 m up, is the full sweep of the Promenade des Anglais, the packed terracotta roofs of the old town, and on the other side the yachts lined up in Port Lympia. A free lift bored into the rock at the end of the beach does most of the climb; the stairs take about 20 minutes. Near the top an artificial waterfall crashes down into a pool, and people picnic on benches under the pines. This is where the postcard shot of Nice comes from.