Nice travel guide, in your ear
The glittering capital of the French Riviera, where a palm-lined seafront and Belle Époque grandeur meet a Baroque old town that was Italian until 1860, and where Matisse and Chagall chased the light.
- 18 narrated stops
- ~54 minutes of stories
- 6 languages
- Offline ready
What is the Gingerguide Nice tour?
It is a self-guided audio walking tour of Nice, France, inside the Gingerguide travel guide app. The tour maps 18 sights and tells the story of each one in a two to three minute narration with a lifelike AI voice. When the story is not enough, ask the built-in AI guide about the place and keep the conversation going. Everything is available in six languages and works fully offline after a one-time download.
About Nice
Nice does not feel entirely French, and for good reason: for most of its long life, it wasn't. The old-town houses are painted Italian ochre and red, the church domes wear coloured tiles, and the dialect leans closer to Genoa than to Paris. For centuries this was Nizza, a city of the House of Savoy, and it became French only in 1860, the day before yesterday as cities count time.
By then outsiders had already remade it. From the late 1700s, wealthy English and Russian families came to winter in its gentle sun, building villas and grand hotels, and paying for a broad walk along the shore, which is why the seafront of a French city is called the Promenade des Anglais, the walk of the English. Nice kept its Italian soul even so, and had already given Italy a hero: Giuseppe Garibaldi was born here in 1807.
The light did the rest. Painters came for it and stayed, Matisse for nearly forty years, Chagall close by. The beach is stubbornly pebbled, not sand. But the food makes up for it: Nice eats socca, a golden pancake of chickpea flour from a wood oven, in a kitchen more Mediterranean than French.
Wander the Cours Saleya in the morning, as the square fills with flowers and cooking smells. Climb the green hill they still call the Castle, though the castle is long gone, for the view along the curve of the bay. And walk the Promenade des Anglais past the rose-pink dome of the Negresco. It was here, on Bastille Day in 2016, that a man drove a truck into the crowd and killed eighty-six people. The city marks it, grieves it, and walks this seafront still.
End the day up on the Castle hill as the sun goes down, the bay a long pale arc below and the sea turning gold to rose. Below, a band tunes up, and the whole warm, unhurried city settles in for the evening. This was always the point of Nice.
One day in Nice
A simple way to walk the highlights, following the route order in the app. Swap anything; Nice rewards detours.
Afternoon and evening
What to see in Nice: all 18 stops
Every place below has its own narrated story in the app, and its own answers when you want more. Walk them in any order; the map shows what is around you.
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Promenade des Anglais
The palm-lined seafront of Nice, running miles along the Bay of Angels, birthplace of the Riviera holiday, funded by wintering English visitors in 1820, and the daily promenade of the whole city.
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Hôtel Negresco
The pink-domed Belle Époque palace hotel on the Promenade, all Riviera glamour, with a 16,000-crystal Baccarat chandelier said to have been made for the Tsar, and an owner who filled it with art.
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Musée Masséna
A dazzling Belle Époque villa on the Promenade, built by descendants of Napoleon's Marshal Masséna, now the museum of the history of Nice, with a free seaside garden of palms out front.
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Place Masséna
Nice's grand central square: deep-red Turin-style arcades, a giant checkerboard pavement, a marble Apollo once banished as indecent, and seven glowing figures kneeling on masts above the crowds.
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Promenade du Paillon
Nice's beloved green heart: a park of lawns, trees and fountains laid over a hidden river where a bus station once stood, with a water mirror that erupts in jets for delighted children.
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Vieux Nice
A warren of ochre lanes and Baroque churches that spent most of its life not French but Savoyard-Italian, with its own dialect, saints and dishes, until Nice was handed to France in 1860.
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Cours Saleya
The glorious market square of the old town: flowers, fruit and Niçois street food six days a week, antiques on Mondays, overlooked by the top-floor windows where Matisse lived for years.
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Cathédrale Sainte-Réparate
The Baroque cathedral of Nice, its Genoese tiled dome floating over the old town, dedicated to a teenage martyr whose body, legend says, drifted here in a boat steered by angels.
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Palais Lascaris
A hidden Baroque palace in the old-town lanes, its grand staircase and frescoed ceilings unchanged since the 1600s, now home to one of France's great collections of historical musical instruments.
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Colline du Château
The city's green balcony between the old town and the port, with the classic view over the Bay of Angels, a castle-less 'Castle Hill', its fortress blown up by Louis XIV in 1706.
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Port Lympia
The old working harbour of Nice, its blue basin ringed by tall Italian-red houses, dug from a marsh in the 1740s, and still sending ferries out to Corsica across the sea.
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Place Garibaldi
Nice's oldest grand square, all Italian-style ochre arcades, honouring native son Giuseppe Garibaldi, the Italian unification hero who bitterly opposed his home city ever becoming French in 1860.
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MAMAC
Four white marble-clad towers holding one of France's best collections of playful post-war art, the New Realism born in Nice around Yves Klein, face to face with American Pop Art.
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Cathédrale Orthodoxe Russe Saint-Nicolas
A Russian cathedral of pink brick and onion domes, improbably risen in Nice, one of the most important Orthodox churches outside Russia, built where a Tsar's heir died in 1865.
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Musée national Marc Chagall
A museum Chagall planned himself, built to hold his 'Biblical Message', seventeen glowing canvases of Genesis, Exodus and the Song of Songs, with his own blue stained glass in the concert hall.
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Musée Matisse
The museum of the painter who loved Nice best, in an ochre villa among Cimiez's olive trees, following Matisse from his sunlit Riviera rooms to the radiant cut-outs of his final years.
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Cimiez: Roman Ruins & Monastery
The hill where Nice began as Roman Cemenelum, a 2,000-year-old arena and baths among the olives, crowned by a Franciscan monastery with Bréa altarpieces, a glorious garden view, and Matisse's grave.
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Cuisine Niçoise & Socca
The sun-drenched, Italian-tinged food of Nice: crisp chickpea socca from the wood oven, the true no-potato salade niçoise, onion pissaladière, and a chard pie that is, surprisingly, a sweet dessert.
Three things most visitors miss
Hôtel Negresco
You will often be told the Negresco's great glass dome was designed by Gustave Eiffel, but it is not true: Eiffel never worked on the hotel, and the dome was the work of its own architect, Édouard-Jean Niermans.
Musée Masséna
The Masséna family gave their seafront villa to the city in 1919 on two conditions: that its garden be opened to the public forever, and that the house become a museum telling the story of Nice.
Place Masséna
The white marble Apollo on the Sun Fountain was once judged too naked for public view and banished from the square for decades in the 20th century; he was only brought back to his fountain in 2011.
Nice tour: questions and answers
Do I need a tour guide in Nice?
Not a human one. Gingerguide covers Nice with 18 narrated sights, so you get the stories a guide would tell, at your own pace and on your own route. And if a story leaves you with a question, you can ask the built-in AI guide and discuss the place right there, the way you would with a guide.
How many stops does the Nice audio tour have?
The Nice guide covers 18 sights. Each one has a researched story of roughly three minutes, about 54 minutes of listening in total. You choose the order and the pace; the tour is self-guided.
Does the Nice tour work offline?
Yes. You can download Nice in the app, audio, photos, and offline map tiles included. After the download, the full tour works without an internet connection.
Which languages does the Nice guide support?
Every Nice narration is available in English, Spanish, French, German, Turkish, and Chinese. You can switch the language in the app at any time.
Is the Nice audio guide free?
The Gingerguide app is free to download, and Nice includes a free preview: you can see all 18 sights on the map at no cost. A premium subscription unlocks the full stories, audio narration, and the offline download.
Hear Nice tell its own story.
Preview all 18 Nice stops free in the Gingerguide app.