If there’s a photo of Antibes on a postcard, website, or calendar, chances are it shows a château built above stone ramparts holding back the blue Mediterranean. We’re not going “o’er the ramparts,” as the song goes, but we’re going o’er to go see ’em. C’mon!
As noted last time, the King of France ordered construction of Fort Carré in the 16th century to protect Antibes against attack from its eastern neighbors. (In those days, Antibes was on the French border).
Enter Vauban
In the next century, Louis XIV, assigned his best engineer, Vauban, to upgrade Fort Carré and the walls surrounding Antibes.
Those great wall-builders, the ancient Romans, built the original wall encircling the city they called Antipolis. But by the 17th century, more than 1,000 years later, it was ready for an upgrade.
Vauban was a highly-respected designer of castles and defensive fortifications. Like Beyoncé or Cher, Vauban was famous enough to be known by just a single name. (He was ahead of his time, maybe?) He oversaw construction of the fortified ramparts that still surround most of Antibes’ Old Town today.
A walking path meanders along on top of the ramparts. It’s a short walk from our hotel. We’ll start our walk at the building in all those postcards – Le Musée Picasso.
Le Musée Picasso
Picasso lived and worked in this building for a few months just after the end of World War II. Today it houses many of Picasso’s works, including many donated by his family.
The Picasso Museum is in a building that used to be called Château Grimaldi. “Grimaldi” is a big name in this part of the world. The Grimaldi family was, and still is the ruling family of Monaco, just down the coast. This building was one of the Grimaldi’s residences.
We’re going to pass on visiting Picasso and Grimaldi today. Instead, we’ll stroll along the path on top the ramparts. It’s a great walk. Old Antibes is on one side, and the blue waters of Baie des Anges, (Bay of Angels), is on the other.
From the Picasso Museum, we walked around the point all the way to Antibes’ well-known port, named after guess who? Vauban.
Port Vauban
This would be the perfect opportunity to check up on our yacht, if we had one. Port Vauban is a great place to park your yacht while you play on the Riviera, far, (but not too far), from the prying eyes at Nice and Cannes.
There’s a special area inside the port called Quai des Milliardaires, (Millionnaires’ dock), built especially to accommodate mega-yachts. But if your mega-ride is over 500 feet long, you’re going to have to park it outside of the port. Too bad for you!
We’d been eating like kings on this trip. So much great French dining. But if you’re us, you can only go so long without having some Italian. And there’s an Italian restaurant just around the corner from our hotel.
We reserved a table at 8:00 PM, (as usual), and showed up on time. They must have opened before 8:00, because the place was already packed. Thank goodness we’d made a reservation.
A friendly and fun server brought over a huge chalkboard, set it up, and explained the day’s specials. She spoke english, french, and italian. We made our choices and had a fantastic meal. I guess you just can’t go wrong dining out in Antibes.
To be continued…
