Promenade du Paillon

This guide to the Promenade du Paillon in Nice opens with an 1887 flood that nearly drowned three washerwomen on the river now buried beneath your feet, and traces centuries of watchmen, storms and a 1744 battle-crossing disaster that made the Paillon the city's most feared sound. It follows the decision to bury the river block by block starting in 1868, and what replaced the concrete decades later. It closes on a modern political dispute over the garden's costly 2025 unveiling.