Medieval lanes below the garden

Below the Jardin Exotique, Èze is a single tangle of medieval lanes: vaulted passages, stone stairways worn round at the edges, bougainvillea and fig trees against golden walls, gallery and atelier doorways one after another. Nothing here is flat — every frame comes with steps in it, which is exactly what makes the village photograph so well: couples half-turned on a stair, an archway as a natural vignette, glimpses of sea at the end of a lane.

Timing decides everything. The village is a standard stop on the Nice–Monaco day-trip circuit, and from late morning the lanes — some barely a person and a half wide — simply jam. Early morning is a different place: shutters still closed, stone cool, lanes empty end to end. The light stays workable longer than you'd expect because the high walls keep the lanes in soft shadow well after sunrise.

Be deliberate about the climb: the village is steep from the car park at the bottom to the garden at the top, and shooting on the way up beats shooting on the way down — faces fresh, light improving, and the garden terraces as the finale rather than a spent afterthought.