Palais Lascaris and a Last Wander in Nice

I got back to Nice from my morning trip to Villefranche-sur-Mer at about 2:00 in the afternoon. Upon my return, I visited Palais Lascaris. Then, I took my last wander around Nice. I leave it tomorrow morning.

Palais Lascaris

Palais Lascaris is a museum in Nice’s old town. It’s in a small palace (small for a palace, not for a home) that was built in the 17th century. It was restored in 1940 and turned into a museum.

The premise of the museum is to show visitors how the truly wealthy lived in the time it was built and occupied. I can tell you, they didn’t live like you and me.

At least, they didn’t live like me. I have no idea who might stumble on this page from the great beyond of the internet. Maybe your life does parallel theirs.

But of the people I know in real life who read this journal, sorry, you have really nice places. But they’re not palaces.

The ticket desk of the Palais Lascaris is on the ground floor. A grand staircase leads from there to the first and second floors. The staircase leads up to at least one more level, but it was roped off.

The ceiling on the ground floor is elegantly painted with designs and a crest. On the first-floor landing, there is a statue. On the first and second floors, the rooms are equally lavishly decorated with paintings, statues, and painted ceilings. When I say, “painted ceilings,” I’m of course not talking about someone applying some flat-white paint with a roller. There are paintings on the ceilings.

When I was at Palais Lascaris, the first floor held a temporary exhibit titled “Merveilles et Curiosités du Palais Lascaris.” It was intended to serve the same purpose as cabinets of curiosity, but spread out over a couple of small rooms. There were ceramic wall decorations, some old chairs, an old harp, a skull, and a multi-drawer cabinet, which might have been a cabinet of curiosities, among other things that I’ve forgotten. This floor also contained a thick, wooden, double door carved with an array of polychrome square decorations. The doors were dated from the 17th century.

The second level of the Palais Lascaris was the “Noble Floor,” restored to its former glory and intended to most accurately depict the mansion of the noble. In the rooms of this floor, there was also a collection of old musical instruments. There were a few harps, one dated from the 19th century, but the rest from the 18th century. A cello dated from the 16th century. There were several violins of similar vintages. Two harpsichords, I forget of what age, were also on display.

The placard beside one instrument said, in French only, that it was a “Sacqueboute ténor” from Nuremberg and dating from 1581. I used Google Translate to tell me what a “sacqueboute” is in English. It very helpfully told me the English word for it is a “sackbut.” I’d never heard of a sackbut. It sounded rude, but I looked it up in the dictionary that comes with my Mac. It’s “an early form of trombone used in Renaissance music.” Huh. Who knew? Probably lots of people, but not me.

Palais Lascaris is an intriguing little museum. Not worth a lot of time, in my opinion, but it’s interesting and worth some time.

Other pictures from Palais Lascaris:

Last Wander in Nice

After I’d finished with Palais Lascaris, there were no more sights in Nice that I knew about that interested me and weren’t blocked off by the ongoing Carnaval de Nice. So, I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering.

Palais Lascaris is in Vieux Nice. I love Vieux Nice, as I do most old sections of old European cities. So I spent more time wandering around there. I didn’t see anything new, but I enjoyed the stroll.

Quai des États-Unis and Promenade des Anglais are near Palais Lascaris, so I spent time walking along them, sitting on a bench there, and taking the opportunity to once more, and for the last time on this trip, to be relaxed and refreshed by Nice’s seafront.

I’ve written about both Vieux Nice and Promenade des Anglais in previous posts. Not much has changed in either place, so I have nothing new to report about them.

I said nothing much has changed, but I meant changed in terms of the physical space. But I do need to update one thing I said previously about Promenade des Anglais.

Yesterday, I mentioned that security was generally tighter in Nice than I’ve seen in most places. I said that the street beside the Promenade des Anglais was closed to traffic, with a heavy city utility vehicle parked across the road at one end and heavy police vehicles blocking the other end. I also said that, a couple of times, I saw a police officer carrying a particularly nasty-looking long gun while patrolling.

I wrote that I wondered if this was the new normal in Nice since the 2016 terror attack on the Promenade des Anglais, or if security was tightened because of the increased crowds on the Promenade des Anglais due to the Carnaval de Nice. I’m happy to report that it’s the latter.

The first couple of times I’d been on the Promenade des Anglais, there’d been a Carnaval venue that took up a portion of the promenade. They kept a side of it open for the public to stroll on, but a portion was for a ticketed venue, and it was packed.

Today, that Carnaval venue was torn down. The street beside the Promenade was completely open to traffic, and there was no significant police presence on the Promenade des Anglais. So, that was nice.

Nice Summary

I titled the opening post of my time in Nice with the awful pun of “Nice is Nice.” The pun was made more ridiculous because the French city of Nice is pronounced differently from the English word nice. To add insult to injury, I admitted that, because this was my first time in Nice, my first post was far too early to say if I would find Nice nice.

I can now report definitively that I think Nice isn’t just nice, but great. I’m sorry to be leaving.

Despite running out of things to do in town, what is here is either interesting or scenic, or both. The sea. The surrounding hills. It’s all beautiful.

If you are into just strolling, the old town is enchanting and welcoming. And the Promenade des Anglais offers a long walk beside the beach, with the Mediterranean rolling out behind it.

Nice also makes for a great base to explore from on day trips. Trains to several nearby seaside towns and cities are frequent.

On this trip, I visited Cannes, Monte Carlo (Monaco), and, this morning, nearby Villefranche-sur-Mer. And there are other destinations easily doable by train as day trips.

If you’re willing to rent a car or try to find a bus that will take you there, there are other places you can visit without moving your base from Nice. I didn’t do that, but it’s an option.

Also, this is the off-season. During the high season, there are available land tours and sea cruises lasting less than a day that aren’t available now. If you visit during the high or shoulder season, you’ll probably find even more ways to enjoyably fill your time in Nice.

Nice is a fairly big city. So it doesn’t have the romance of small, old European towns. But with all it has in the city and nearby, I could imagine escaping more of Toronto’s winter here.

So, were my seven nights here the right amount of time to allocate to Nice? It was more than necessary to see only the sights in Nice. But to relax here and explore the nearby cities and towns, it wasn’t nearly enough. I ended up wondering where the time went and wishing I had more here.