The Ville d'Hiver villas

The Ville d'Hiver was laid out in the 1860s on the wooded ridge behind the beach, as a place for winter visitors to breathe pine air. What that left is a hillside neighbourhood of three hundred villas in every style the century could think of — Swiss chalet, neo-Gothic, colonial — with fretwork balconies, verandas and no two façades alike.

It photographs best as a walk rather than a single frame. The curving lanes give doorways, gates and shuttered windows in soft green shade; the Parc Mauresque at the top opens out over the roofs and the bay; and the iron observatory tower and the footbridge that reaches it are the one unmistakably industrial note in a district of timber and lace.

Mornings are best: the pines throw hard, patchy shade at midday, and the streets are residential and quiet enough that early sessions bother nobody. It is a ten-minute walk uphill from the seafront, or a short ride on the lift that connects the two towns.