Place Masséna

Place Masséna is the hinge of Nice. It sits where the old town, the shopping street of Avenue Jean Médecin, the Promenade des Anglais and the Jardin Albert 1er meet, and most visitors cross it several times a day without planning to. It is named after Marshal André Masséna, the French military commander who was born in Nice.

The square was planned in the nineteenth century, before Nice became part of France. Joseph Vernier drew up the design in 1843, with arcaded buildings modelled on the Rue de Rivoli in Paris, and it was completed around 1860, the year Nice became French. The facades are painted in the deep red ochre typical of Piedmontese architecture, and the arcades give shade to the cafés and shops below.

The square was redesigned when the tram arrived in 2007. Traffic was largely removed, new black-and-white paving turned it into an open esplanade, and the square became a broad pedestrian space lined with palms and stone pines. At the southern end, the Fontaine du Soleil, inaugurated in 1956, has five bronze figures by Alfred Janniot representing the planets, around a seven-metre marble Apollo that was removed in the 1970s and returned in 2011.

Look up as well as around. Jaume Plensa's installation Conversation à Nice consists of seven kneeling figures perched on tall poles, representing the seven continents. After dark they are lit from within and slowly change colour, which makes an evening walk across the square worthwhile even if you saw it by day.

Place Masséna is the stage for the city's big events, including the Nice Carnival and the New Year celebrations, when grandstands and lights fill the space. The rest of the year it is a meeting point for locals and visitors and a place to sit by the fountain and watch the trams glide past. It is flat, accessible for wheelchair users and open at all hours.

Two tram stops, Masséna and Opéra-Vieille Ville, serve the square. From here the Promenade du Paillon park stretches north-east, the lanes of Vieux Nice begin to the south-east, and the sea is a couple of minutes away through the Jardin Albert 1er.