Description of the attraction
The castle hill is not high (only 92 meters high), and there is no castle there. This is the park from where you can enjoy perhaps the best view of Nice. The name of the place captures the history of a completely different Nice - formidable, warlike, long gone into oblivion.
Until the beginning of the 18th century, there really was a fortress-castle with a seven-century history, which withstood many sieges. In 1543, it was besieged by the armies of the allies - the warlike king-knight Francis the First and the Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. During the Franco-Turkish siege, the northern fortifications were destroyed, and the Duke of Savoy, Emmanuel Philibert, reconstructed the defensive system. After the completion of the work, the city was already besieged by the troops of Louis XIV, after which the duke decided to additionally strengthen the castle. This did not help either: in 1706, during the War of Spanish Succession, Louis XIV laid siege to the fortress again, the castle was turned into ruins and surrendered after 54 days of bombing.
Solid ruins lay on the top of the hill until 1830, when the king of Sardinia (the predecessor of Italy) Carl Felix ordered the creation of a park here. In September 1860, Emperor Napoleon III of France came to the annexed Nice and visited the Castle Hill. "This is the most beautiful landscape I have ever seen!" - he said.
The view from the top of the hill is truly mesmerizing. From here, from a specially equipped observation deck, on the right you can see the entire sparkling Bay of Angels with its six-kilometer promenade, on the left - the port of Nice, filled with yachts and ships.
The park is indented by whimsically winding alleys framed by retaining walls of limestone. There are many benches and small cafes. The dense forest (cypress, pine, hornbeam, oak) gives a lot of shade. On the site of the ancient tower, a large waterfall, built back in 1885, is rustling. The ruins of the ancient walls have been preserved among the greenery.
Here, on the hill, is one of the oldest cemeteries in Nice, the Castle. Built on the ruins of an ancient citadel, it includes the remains of a 16th century wall. About three thousand graves are located on terraces. Here are buried Alexander Herzen, founder of the Mercedes brand Emil Jellinek, mother of Giuseppe Garibaldi Rosa Raimondi.
You can climb the hill on foot along the shady alleys, on a funny white tourist train or on a free lift arranged in the thickness of the cliff. You cannot get to the summits only by car: their movement in the park is prohibited.
