Cannes

At the western end of the Croisette stands the Palace of Festivals and Congresses, the concrete bunker that becomes the centre of the film universe for twelve days each spring. Outside festival time you can climb the famous steps yourself, and the audio guide fills in who climbed them before you. Just beside it, the Chemin des Etoiles on the Esplanade Pompidou holds the handprints of more than three hundred actors and directors pressed into the pavement. Further along the boulevard, the Regent Carlton Cannes is the Belle Époque palace hotel whose twin cupolas are the most photographed façade on the Riviera and the backdrop to Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief.

Above the old harbour rises Le Suquet, the oldest quarter of Cannes on Mont Chevalier, a knot of steep cobbled lanes, flowered balconies and small squares. At the top, the Musée des explorations du monde occupies the former château of the Lérins monks and the Chapelle Sainte-Anne, with collections from the Himalayas, the Arctic and Oceania and a watchtower you reach by 109 uneven medieval steps; the reward is the whole bay laid out below. Next door, the Église Notre-Dame d'Espérance, built between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, is the parish church of the old town and the setting for summer concerts on its forecourt.

At the foot of the Suquet, the covered Marché Forville is where Cannes actually shops: open every morning except Monday, it is the place for socca, panisses and the fish landed a few hundred metres away. From there, Rue Meynadier runs pedestrian-only towards the centre, lined with cheese shops, confectioners and small boutiques at prices the Croisette would not recognise. Finish at the IGY Vieux-Port de Cannes, where traditional pointu fishing boats share the water with superyachts and the ferries leave for the islands.

The Lérins Islands are the quietest fifteen-minute boat ride on the Riviera. Île Sainte-Marguerite, the larger island, is a wooded reserve of eucalyptus and Aleppo pine wrapped around the Fort Royal, where the Man in the Iron Mask spent eleven years in a cell you can still enter; the audio guide weighs the theories about who he really was. Off its northern shore lies an underwater museum of six sculptures by Jason deCaires Taylor, free to visit with a snorkel. The smaller Île Saint-Honorat has been home to monks almost continuously since around AD 410, and the Cistercians of the Abbaye de Lérins still tend an eight-hectare vineyard, make honey and the herbal liqueur Lérina, and open their church to visitors.

Cannes is a good base for day trips. Twenty minutes inland, Grasse has been the perfume capital of the world since the eighteenth century, and the Musée International de la Parfumerie traces four thousand years of scent before you visit the working factories. The hilltop village of Mougins, between the two, was Picasso's home for his final years. To the west, the red porphyry Massif de l'Esterel drops into the sea along the Corniche d'Or, one of the most dramatic coastal roads in France.

Nice Côte d'Azur airport is about 24 km east, with direct trains and buses to Cannes station, which sits a few blocks back from the Croisette. The centre is flat and walkable; only the Suquet involves a climb. Ferries to Sainte-Marguerite leave from the Vieux-Port, while the monks run the only boats to Saint-Honorat from the Albert-Edouard jetty beside the Palais. Avoid the festival fortnight in May unless you are here for it; June and September bring the best balance of warmth and space.