Lérins excursions, Suquet strolls, palace spas, water sports, the Festival. The notebook of Cannes activities for 24 hours, a weekend or a whole week.
Six picks that actually entertain a six-year-old without ruining a parent's afternoon. Tested, ranked, what we'd skip.
Sunset cliffs, monastery wine, candlelit five-table dinner. Six moments to plan a weekend around.
Boat half-day, fruits de mer at Astoux, bar-hop in the Suquet. What works for a group of 6-10.
Paddle, jet-ski, Estérel cliffs, Marineland, rue Meynadier. Six things 11-17s actually want to do.
A 48-hour plan: Forville market, Lérins ferry, Carlton rooftop, Astoux. Hour by hour, no nightclub.
6pm apéro at La Bocca to a midnight Croisette walk. The honest after-work and after-dinner rhythm.
Spa, museum, cinema, long lunch. The locals' rainy-day moves — often better than the sunny version.
Empty Croisette, half-price palaces, Mougins afternoons, Sainte-Marguerite in February. The underrated season.
Seven minutes by train: a walled old town, a Picasso museum where he actually painted, a morning market. The easy day out.
Seventeen minutes by train: the world's perfume capital, three historic houses, a museum most visitors skip. The half-day, done right.
One of the Riviera's great coastal walks, a fine-sand beach, a botanical garden, a palace you admire from the path.
A perched village of galleries and cypresses, a new women-artists museum, a lotus pond, where Picasso ended his days.
Ten minutes by train: real sand, umbrella pines, a seafront promenade and Europe's oldest jazz festival. The summer day we'd take.
Ten minutes above Cannes: the world's only Bonnard museum, a quiet old town with a Tobiasse chapel, the postcard view over the bay.
Fifteen minutes east: the pottery town Picasso adopted, his War and Peace chapel, a ceramics museum — and the seaside where Napoleon landed in 1815.
Twenty minutes west: a seafront castle and listed gardens, two marinas, mimosa-yellow hills in winter, the doorway to the red Estérel.
Twenty minutes west, where the coast turns red: a rock park, hidden calanques, kayaking, Estérel trails and a great corniche drive.
Twenty-seven minutes by train: Vieux Nice, the Cours Saleya market, Castle Hill, the Promenade des Anglais and a Matisse museum. The car-free city day.
Renoir's house and olive grove at Les Collettes, the medieval hill village of Haut-de-Cagnes and its Château-Musée Grimaldi. The art-and-stone half-day.
Twenty minutes inland: a rare grid-plan village from 1519, the arcaded Place des Arcades, a Friday Provençal market and walks along the Brague.
The great artists' village: the Fondation Maeght's modern-art collection, 16th-century ramparts, Chagall's grave and the art-filled Colombe d'Or.
An hour east by train: the medieval Rock, the cliff-set Oceanographic Museum, the belle-époque Casino square and the Grand Prix harbour.
Fifteen minutes out of the Vieux Port: wild Sainte-Marguerite with its Man-in-the-Iron-Mask fort, and Saint-Honorat where monks still make wine. The boat day.
The Matisse chapel he designed top to bottom, a walled old town, France's smallest cathedral — paired with Saint-Paul-de-Vence ten minutes away. Mind: no train.
The far end of the Riviera at the Italian border: the Serre de la Madone and Val Rahmeh gardens, a Ligurian old town and the lemon-sculpture Fête du Citron.
The eagle's-nest village 400m above the sea: the exotic garden on the castle ruins, the Nietzsche path up from the coast and Fragonard. Beautiful off-peak.
A working craft town: glassblowers at the furnace, the bubbled glass Biot invented, a glass écomuseum and the largest Fernand Léger collection in France.
One of the deepest harbours on the coast: ochre houses tumbling to the water, Cocteau's frescoed chapel, the medieval Rue Obscure and a free citadel.
The Riviera's ritziest peninsula: the rose-pink Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild and its nine gardens, a wild coastal path and the Paloma and Passable beaches.
Half an hour west: Roman Forum Julii with its amphitheatre and early-Christian cathedral close, a belle-époque resort and the red rock of the Estérel.
Every Thursday at 5pm, what's on this weekend in Cannes and nearby — concerts, exhibitions, pop-up events.
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