Menton, France: Self-Guided Walking Tour

Menton is a French Riviera town known for its Baroque old town, historic villas, gardens, museums and Mediterranean setting near the Italian border. The best things to do in Menton range from exploring the Basilique Saint-Michel-Archange and the Bastion Museum to discovering tropical plants, Belle Époque architecture and imaginative historic estates. Neywo offers a free audio guide for Menton with 25 narrated places.

What to See in Menton

Menton’s sights extend from the seafront and harbour up through the historic centre and into the gardens and estates above the town. These are some of the most distinctive places to include in a visit.

Palais Carnolès and the Musée des Beaux-Arts

The Palais Carnolès was once the summer residence of the princes of Monaco. Today, the former princely residence houses Menton’s Musée des Beaux-Arts, combining art and history with a remarkable botanical setting on Avenue de la Madone.

Domaine des Colombières

The Domaine des Colombières is a villa and garden estate classified as a historic monument. The villa dates from 1790 and has three storeys, with a red-and-yellow exterior and interiors decorated with Ferdinand Bac’s frescoes, paintings and modernist furniture.

Bac transformed the estate between 1918 and 1927, designing the house and gardens as a single imaginative experience. Its rooms draw on Mediterranean places and themes: the Venetian Room evokes a carnival, while the Parrot Room features painted wooden cabinets filled with birds. The gardens reflect Bac’s memories of Greece, Turkey, Italy and Morocco.

Maison de la rue Loredan-Larchey and Villa Les Mouettes

Two early twentieth-century residences offer a glimpse of Riviera villa architecture. At number 15, the Maison de la rue Loredan-Larchey is notable for its sgraffito frieze beneath the roof overhang. Villa Les Mouettes, at 8 bis rue Guyau, is reached by the Léopold-Bernstamm staircase and is recognized for its painted friezes.

Bastion Museum

Built in the seventeenth century by Honoré the Second, Prince of Monaco, the Bastion stands on Menton’s harbour wall. It is now devoted to the work of Jean Cocteau, who restored the building himself. Pebble mosaics cover its alcoves, reception hall and outer walls, making the building itself part of the artistic experience.

Chapelle Saint-Jacques de Menton

The Chapelle Saint-Jacques is a Catholic chapel in Menton. It is also known simply as the Chapelle Saint-Jacques and forms part of the city’s religious heritage.

Jean Cocteau Museum

The Jean Cocteau Museum, also known as the Musée Jean-Cocteau Collection Séverin-Wunderman, was created around the collection of Séverin Wunderman, an American businessman and admirer of Cocteau. Inaugurated in November 2011, it became an important public resource devoted to the artist’s work.

The building was designed by architect Rudy Ricciotti. However, the museum has been closed since 2018, after Storm Adrian caused flooding that seriously damaged the building and part of the collection.

Musée de préhistoire régionale

The Musée de préhistoire régionale, also called the Musée de préhistoire Stanislas Bonfils, presents collections connected with the prehistory of the region. It provides a different perspective on Menton, reaching further back than the town’s Belle Époque and Baroque landmarks.

Fontana Rosa, the Garden of Novelists

Fontana Rosa is a Belle Époque garden created from 1922 by the Spanish writer Vicente Blasco Ibáñez. Known as the Garden of Novelists, it combines Spanish and Menton pottery with lush planting and architectural influences from Andalusia and the Arab-Persian world.

The grounds include ficus trees, araucarias, palms, banana trees and scented rosebushes. Decorative features include a small elevated villa covered in polychromatic pottery, a library, an aquarium, a colonnade, a concrete pergola, ceramic-panelled benches and a large round steel pergola over the central staircase.

Fontana Rosa was also a place of literary work. Blasco Ibáñez wrote Mare Nostrum there, a novel filmed in 1926 as Torrent. The garden was made a Historic Monument in 1990.

The former Riviera Palace Hotel and Winter Palace

Menton’s historic hotel architecture includes the former Riviera Palace Hotel, or Hôtel Riviera-Palace, at 28 Avenue Riviera. The Hôtel Winter Palace, a former hotel at 20 bis Avenue Riviera, is another notable part of the town’s historic setting.

Hôtel d’Adhémar de Lantagnac

At 24 Rue Saint-Michel, the Hôtel d’Adhémar de Lantagnac is a historic private mansion. Also known as the Hôtel Adhémar de Lantagnac, it has been protected as a French historic monument since June 24, 1977.

Villa Tempe a Pailla

Villa Tempe a Pailla, also known as Tempe a Païa, was built in Menton during the 1930s. Set on a hill above the town centre along the road to Castellar, it is a striking example of modernist architecture on the Côte d’Azur.

Monastère de l’Annonciade

The Monastère de l’Annonciade stands on a hill above Menton. Its elevated position makes it a distinctive place to see the relationship between the monastery and the town below.

Jardin botanique du Val Rahmeh

The Jardin botanique du Val Rahmeh belongs to France’s National Museum of Natural History and lies just below Boulevard Garavan, close to the Mediterranean. Its collections focus on plants from warm and humid climates.

The garden contains palms, citrus trees, olives, chorisia, datura and lotus, as well as a rainforest area with bamboo, gingers, philodendrons and tropical fruit trees. A separate path is devoted to spices and herbs. Among the rare plants is Sophora toromiro, a species that has disappeared from Easter Island. The grounds also include olive trees more than 400 years old, a pond with water hyacinths, water lilies and papyrus, and a second garden reached by a bridge.

Basilique Saint-Michel-Archange

The Basilique Saint-Michel-Archange is one of Menton’s outstanding Baroque landmarks. Built in the seventeenth century, the Catholic parish church is dedicated to the archangel Saint Michael and has the status of a minor basilica.

Flights of steps lead up from the seafront to Le Campanin, a calade-paved square in the historic centre. The square has risseu patterns in its paving and opens onto views of Menton’s Baroque architecture. The basilica’s bell tower rises 53 metres, creating a landmark visible from the sea. Since 1947, the basilica and its cemetery have been protected as historic monuments.

Explore Menton with a Self-Guided Audio Tour

A Menton self-guided walking tour is an easy way to connect the city’s museums, gardens, churches and historic buildings without joining a group. Neywo’s free Menton audio guide includes 3 walking tours, 1 bus route and 1 bike route, with narration available in 11 languages.

The walks are:

• Cocteau’s Bastion and the Baroque Old Town of Menton — 1.06 km, 56 minutes and 7 narrated stops.
• Garavan’s Garden of Novelists and Tropical Plants — 1.65 km, 55 minutes and 5 narrated stops.
• Belle Époque Menton: Palaces, Churches and a Princely Palace — 3.15 km, 92 minutes and 8 narrated stops.

There is also a 4.6 km bus route lasting 20 minutes with 6 stops, and a 1.7 km bike route lasting 8 minutes with 4 stops. The app tells the story of each place as you reach it, at your own pace, with no group and no schedule. Download Neywo and explore Menton as you walk, cycle or travel through the city.

Menton is part of Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur in France. For more nearby places to explore, you can also discover Nice and Èze.