01
Menton
Locals call it the Pearl of France, and after ten minutes in the old town's stacked pastel houses and lemon groves, the nickname stops sounding like marketing. It sits at the very last curve of the Côte d'Azur before Italy takes over.
France · walking list
Paris gets the postcards. These are the towns that get the second visit — walled hill villages, a lakefront that out-blues the Riviera, and a Loire château town built for wandering without a map. Every stop below links to a full walking tour already on Armchair Walks.
01
Locals call it the Pearl of France, and after ten minutes in the old town's stacked pastel houses and lemon groves, the nickname stops sounding like marketing. It sits at the very last curve of the Côte d'Azur before Italy takes over.
02
Canals this clean shouldn't run straight through a town centre, but Annecy's do, with the Alps stacked up behind the rooftops as if the postcard rack got the backdrop wrong on purpose.
03
Van Gogh painted this town more than eighty times in fifteen months, and the Roman arena he could see from his window is still the first thing you notice walking in from the river.
04
Seven popes ruled Christendom from here in the 1300s, and the fortress-palace they left behind still dwarfs everything else inside the medieval ramparts that wrap the whole old town.
05
Matisse and Chagall both painted here, and the walled village they left behind is now one long gallery-lined lane with the Riviera spread out below the ramparts on every side.
06
Provence's answer to Venice, minus the crowds — waterwheels still turn along the canals that split the town in two, and Sunday mornings bring one of the biggest antiques markets in France.
07
Leonardo da Vinci spent his last three years in this Loire Valley town, buried inside the grounds of a château that still looms over the river from a cliff at the town's edge.