The Saint-Michel parvis and its steps

Climb the lanes from the seafront and the old town opens, halfway up, onto the parvis Saint-Michel. On one side stands the Basilique Saint-Michel-Archange with its ochre and cream facade and campanile; on the other the smaller Chapelle des Pénitents-Blancs. Between them the square is paved in a black-and-white pebble mosaic showing the arms of the Grimaldi, laid in the seventeenth century and still crisp.

The frame most people miss is downward. From the far edge of the parvis a long straight flight of steps drops back toward the port, and the sea fills the gap at the bottom — a subject on those steps has the whole Mediterranean behind them and nothing else in the frame. Turn round and the campanile does the same job vertically.

Light is late here. The square is enclosed and the hill is behind it, so morning is flat; the parvis comes alive in the last two hours of the day, when the sun reaches over the roofs onto the church front and the mosaic pattern picks up raking light.

This is an active church square and a residential lane, so a session works best small and quick: no blocking the stairs, no shoot during services, and the climb up from the seafront is steep — count ten minutes and shoes that manage worn stone steps.