Roquebrune-Cap-Martin Village
Wedged between the glitzy principality of Monaco and the Italian border, Roquebrune-Cap-Martin is inexplicably overlooked by most visitors who speed past on the Corniche. Its medieval village — the oldest feudal castle in France, dating to 970 AD — sits above a cape where Le Corbusier spent his summers and ultimately drowned while swimming in 1965.
The Castle & Village
The Château de Roquebrune is a genuine 10th-century keep, not a romantic reconstruction, and its interior rooms — with their metre-thick walls, vaulted ceilings and medieval furniture — convey a visceral sense of the Middle Ages that more polished sites cannot match. Entry costs just €5 and you will likely have the battlements almost to yourself, with Monaco's skyscrapers glittering incongruously in the bay below.
The village lanes are steep and cobbled, lined with bougainvillea and tiny restaurants serving Ligurian-inflected cooking — fresh pasta, pesto and anchovies feature alongside Provençal standards. Every August the village stages a Passion Play in the streets, a tradition dating back to a 15th-century vow made during a plague.
The Cap & Coastal Path
Below the village, the Cap Martin peninsula juts into the sea with a coastal path — the Promenade Le Corbusier — that winds around rocky limestone headlands above crystal-clear water. Le Corbusier's tiny wooden cabanon (a 15-square-metre holiday cabin he designed for himself) still stands on the cape and can be visited by appointment through the Cap Moderne cultural site.
The cape's clear, shallow waters are popular with snorkellers, and several rocky coves accessible from the coastal path offer swimming away from the crowded beaches of Monaco and Menton.
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