Bellanda Tower

This guide to Bellanda Tower in Nice traces a hilltop lookout through four names and as many demolitions, from a medieval fortress torn down by Louis the Fourteenth's troops to a private rebuild in the 1820s and a wartime wrecking in 1944. It pauses on the spring of 1831, when a young composer arrived in Nice broken-hearted and later called his weeks on this promontory the happiest of his life. He had just fled a broken engagement in Paris and was passing through on his way to Rome.