The Promenade des Anglais, the little coastal road that was then used by about 100 English families ad their carriages has today become one of the most clogged through fares in France. It is an eight-lane highway, 8 km (5 miles) long, on which only aggressive survive, and you need to be alert. Watch your window, too, if you stop at the lights in summer: resplendent with marching palms and flowerbeds, the Prom (even the french calling that way) has an automatic watering system and the sprinklers are liable to turn your car into a jacuzzi if your reflexes aren’t sharp enough.

Today’s scene on the Promenade des Anglais is very different from its 19th-century counterpart. When Henri Negresco’s palace first opened it’s door in 1913 they pointed north:150 years after Tobias Smollet introduced sea-bathing here, it still had not dawned on anyone that the future of tourism lay in hotels with resplendent fronts, not their backs, to the sea.

If you would like to see what Nice looks like now, go to the Nice Webcam which is located on the Promenade des Anglais.