The ochre old town and the Rue Obscure

Behind the waterfront, Villefranche's old town is a stack of stepped lanes barely wide enough for two people, painted in the ochre, apricot and faded rose the Riviera used before white arrived. Rue de l'Église, Rue du Poilu and the flights that link them give tall, narrow frames with washing lines and shutters overhead, and the colour holds even under flat cloud.

The unusual frame is the Rue Obscure. It is a thirteenth-century street with houses built over the top of it, so it runs for about a hundred and thirty metres as a vaulted stone tunnel with occasional openings to the light. Nothing else on this coast looks like it. Expose for the mouth of the passage and let the vault go dark, or put your subject in one of the side openings and use the shaft of daylight.

Light arrives late in these lanes and leaves early — the town faces east and the hill is steep behind it. Mid-morning to early afternoon is when the openings actually carry light down into the passages; sunrise is for the quay, not for here.

This is a lived-in neighbourhood, not a set: keep the tripod out of doorways, keep voices down early, and expect the occasional scooter. In season, cruise-ship tenders land on the quay and the lanes fill for an hour or two around them.