Leyla Falkenau
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riviera

Leyla's Riviera

Menton, Cap-d'Ail, the paths between them, and the Ligurian side at Camogli. The coast my grandmother saw in 1966 and I walked in 2025, in the wrong shoes.

Leyla in hard midday sun against a white lime wall

My grandmother did this coast at eighteen, in 1966, in a borrowed car with an aunt who smoked and didn’t believe in maps. I did it at twenty-five with a train pass, a notebook and, for some of the way, company I’m leaving out. Same sea. She hasn’t seen it since 1968; I write it down for her, one place at a time, and she corrects my French by post. This is not a list of what is good. It’s a list of where I stood still long enough to notice something. Go in June if you can, before the coast fills up and after the water stops being a dare. Vale, servus, allons-y.

Menton

Les Halles de Menton

A covered market from the days when markets were built to be looked at, with a tiled front and a smell of lemons and wet stone at seven in the morning. Buy one lemon. One. The woman at the stall will laugh at you and then put three in the bag anyway, which is how I learned that nobody leaves this town empty-handed. On Saturdays the whole thing spills out onto the quay and you can buy a tablecloth you don’t need.

Practical: 5 quai de Monléon, by the old port. Mornings only, done by one o’clock; Saturday is the big one, Monday the quiet one.

Rampes and Parvis Saint-Michel

Two staircases that split and climb to a church square paved in black and white pebbles, a quarter of a million of them if you believe the plaque, which I did because I wasn’t going to count. The climb was begun in 1753, which means somebody has been out of breath here for almost three centuries. In summer they put an orchestra on the parvis and the whole old town leans out of its windows. Stand at the top at dusk and look back at the sea; it’s where I understood why Oma never came back. You can’t improve on it, so you stop trying.

Practical: From quai Bonaparte up to the basilica, old town. Free, steep, wear real shoes. Evening light is the point.

Jardin Serre de la Madone

A garden on the hill behind the town that looks like somebody’s grand house went to seed on purpose. Terraces, a pond with lilies, plants from everywhere arguing politely. I sat on a bench for an hour and wrote a letter that was mostly about the sound of water, and the gardener walked past twice and didn’t ask me to leave. It closes for the dead of winter, which seems fair; even gardens need to not be looked at sometimes.

Practical: In the Val de Gorbio, above the town; a bus or a long walk up from the centre. Daytime hours, roughly ten to five; closed November and December. Guided visits are booked through the town’s gardens office.

Plage des Sablettes

Not sand. Fine gravel, the kind that gets in everything and that you forgive by the second day. The beach sits under the old town between the two ports, with the promenade redone in 2019 so that you can walk from a coffee to the water in bare feet without regret. This is where I did my first swim of the summer and screamed, and a man reading a newspaper didn’t look up. That’s the Riviera: nobody is impressed by you, which is restful.

Practical: Below the old town, between the Vieux Port and Garavan. Free beach, lifeguards in summer. Early morning, before the chairs go out.

Mitron Bakery

A bakery on a back street that a famous kitchen on the edge of town opened as a second thought, and it’s the better thought. The lemon tart tastes like the town; the Menton fougasse is the thing to carry up the Rampes. The queue is half locals with their own cloth bags and half people like me, pretending. Don’t pretend. Ask what’s just come out of the oven.

Practical: 8 rue Piéta, old town, two minutes from the market. Closed Mondays; go mid-morning when the second batch is out.

Cap-d’Ail and the paths

Sentier du littoral, Cap-d’Ail

Three kilometres of path from the Monaco border at Plage Marquet to Plage Mala, with the sea on one side and villas on the other pretending not to watch. Black volcanic rock, agaves, a bench every time you need one. There is no shade, which I learned in June with a straw hat that gave up after an hour. The station is in the middle, so you can do it in halves and tell people you did it whole. It closes in bad weather and they mean it.

Practical: Start at Plage Marquet (Monaco side) or at Cap-d’Ail station, follow “sentier du bord de mer”. Free; the Marquet-to-Pointe des Douaniers section is flat and wheelchair-accessible. Go before ten or after five.

Plage Mala and Eden Plage

A cove you reach by a staircase that doubles as a conversation starter. The water is a green that I’ve tried to describe in four letters and failed four times. The beach restaurant opens at Easter and shuts when the season does, and in June the lunch is long and the shade is short. Somebody took a photograph of me here that I didn’t ask for. I’m still not telling you who.

Practical: Below Cap-d’Ail station; steps down from the coastal path. Restaurant from Easter to autumn, lunch booked a day ahead. Weekday, late lunch.

Promenade Le Corbusier and the Cabanon

The old customs path along Cap-Martin, renamed for the architect who built himself a wooden hut here the size of a Barcelona kitchen and called it enough. You can only go inside on a guided visit, in a group of fifteen, from the station car park. I went with a retired couple from Lyon who held hands the whole walk. The hut is the only building he ever made for himself. One room, one window, one view. I thought about Oma’s house, which has fourteen rooms and the same view.

Practical: Roquebrune-Cap-Martin station; the promenade is free all year, the Cabanon visits run roughly April to early November and must be booked by email with the Cap Moderne association. Morning tours; the path itself at the end of the day.

Camogli, the Ligurian side

Revello

A focacceria on the promenade since 1964, nearest to the church, which is how everyone gives directions here. The cheese focaccia is the Recco kind, two sheets of pastry so thin you can read through them, with the cheese melting out of the seams. There’s a queue at weekends and a worse one on Sundays; go on a Tuesday at eleven and eat it on the wall with your legs over the water. Sea at noon, anchovies at night, this in between.

Practical: Via Garibaldi 183, on the lungomare. Mornings, weekdays. Take it away; the wall is the table.

Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta and the Castello della Dragonara

The church sits on what used to be an island, which is why the oldest houses huddle around it like they’re still afraid of the water. Steps up from the little harbour square, a baroque interior that’s far too much gold for a fishing town, and the castle leaning against it from the twelfth century. I lit a candle for someone I’m not naming. The fishermen’s boats below are painted the same colours as the houses, so you can find your own from the sea. I believe that story completely.

Practical: At the harbour end of the promenade, up the steps. Church open mornings and late afternoons; the castle is sometimes used for exhibitions, sometimes shut. Go at six when the light hits the façades.

San Fruttuoso

A tenth-century abbey in a cove you can only reach by boat or on foot, which is the correct way to reach anything worth reaching. The ferry leaves from the harbour, the sea decides whether it runs, and when it doesn’t, the abbey closes too. I went on a Wednesday with eleven other people and a dog. Swim before the abbey, not after; the water is colder than it looks and the monks’ stones are warmer.

Practical: Boats from Camogli harbour, a few minutes from the station; or the path from San Rocco if you have the legs. Abbey run by FAI, closed Mondays, weather permitting. Morning boat out, afternoon boat back.

Hotel Cenobio dei Dogi

The one hotel in this guide, because every guide I write is secretly a hotel guide. It sits at the edge of the village under the Portofino hills with a terrace where the waiters know which table is yours by the second morning. I write room cards for small hotels for a living, and I spent two breakfasts rewriting theirs in my head. The name means monastery, and the oldest part still has that kind of quiet. Everything on this coast used to be something else.

Practical: Via Niccolò Cuneo 34, five minutes’ walk from the harbour. Shoulder season, a sea-facing room, breakfast outside.

— L.

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