It's a bit like Montmartre, with an artistic tradition:

The house which used to belong to a local poet:

There's a cultural centre with an art course for kids:

But the "artists' corner" is for sale or rent, expression isn't entirely "libre":

Today you can study to be a cyberjournalist - and sport has become such big business it has its own journalism course:

Monument to Catherine Segurane:

Catherine Ségurane (Catarina Ségurana in the Niçard dialect of Provençal) is a folk heroine of the city of Nice, France who is said to have played a decisive role in repelling the city's siege by Turkish invaders allied with Francis I ... in the summer of 1543. ... Jean Badat, a historian who stood witness to the siege, made no mention of her involvement in the defense ... Nevertheless, the legend of Catherine Ségurane has excited the local imagination ... In 1923, a bas-relief monument to Catherine was erected near the supposed location of her feat.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Nice

It is not necessarily a true history, but as Ford says in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, "when the legend becomes truth, print the legend".

http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/02/ford.html

Letter from Nice

   "I've tested Munich, Florence, Genoa - but nothing suits my old head like this Nice ... At all events, I am told that the summer here is more refreshing than at any place in the interior of Germany (the evenings with sea breeze, the nights cool). The air is incomparable, the strength it gives one (and also the light that fills the sky) not to be found anywhere else in Europe.

   Finally I should mention that one can live here cheaply, very cheaply, and that the place is large enough in scope to permit every degree of concealment to a hermit. The altogether select things of nature, such as the forest paths on the closest hill, or on the St. Jean Peninsula, I have all to myself. Similarly the entire Promenade (about a forty-five minute walk) is splendidly free, inasmuch as people visit for only a few hours during the day
. . .
   One is so 'un-German' here: I can't emphasize that strongly enough."

Letter to Heinrich Köselitz, November 24, 1885

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/452786.html

Tomorrow we're off to Rapallo, and last night I discovered that Nietzsche had stayed there too:

Zarathustra comes to Rapallo

   "The following winter [1882-83] I lived near that charming, quiet bay that intervenes between Chiavari and the foothills of Portofino, the Bay of Rapallo, not far from Genoa.
...
   In the morning I would ascend in a southerly direction along the splendid road that leads high up to Zoagli, a road that passes through pines and offers a view far out over the sea. In the afternoon, when my health permitted, I would walk around the entire Bay of Santa Margherita and over the hills all the way to the tip of Portofino. . . . On these two paths, the first entire part of Zarathustra, and above all the figure of Zarathustra himself as a type, came to me. Or, rather, he overcame me." Ecce Homo

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/452786.html

Rapallo diary next week.