**Available for a few days for free on YouTube, an Arte documentary revisits the construction of Nice’s image, a city shaped by the gaze of artists as much as by tourism.**
Nice. Behind its colorful facades and its bay, it is more than just a postcard. The documentary *directed by Thierry Thomas*, *Nice, the Artists, and the Azure*, offers to revisit its history and identity through the images, archives, and words of those who have contemplated it. The film, 53 minutes long, is broadcast on [Arte](https://www.arte.tv/fr/) and temporarily available online on YouTube.
**The city is presented as a paradoxical place.** For some, it evokes a closed, reserved, almost exclusive space. But its history reveals a completely different face. Before its annexation to France in 1860, Nice belonged to the Piedmont. This historical uniqueness has marked its identity. Italian influence remains visible, as does that of the English and Russians, who built their villas there in the 19th century.
This past as a privileged residence gave birth to **mass tourism**. But it also nurtured an artistic imagination. Writers and painters stopped there, fascinated by the light and the sea. The Baie des Anges thus offered material for thought and inspiration. Nietzsche, staying in Nice, formulated part of his thinking there. Claude Monet saw it as a palette impossible to capture without “diamonds and gemstones.”
[Henri Matisse](https://www.nicepremium.fr/actualite/succes-pour-lexposition-henri-matisse-formes-libres-au-japon/), who arrived in 1916, chose to live there until his death. He made it his anchor. Other artists, like Bonnard, Picasso, or Renoir, worked or stayed there. All contributed to constructing an image of Nice that surpasses reality.
The documentary does not limit itself to this memory. It also gives a voice to contemporary creators, such as Ernest Pignon-Ernest and Chantal Thomas. Their testimonies engage in dialogue with those of the past and allow for connecting the city of yesterday to that of today.
## **A French Riviera Shaped by Imagination**
The central question of the film is simple: what defines the identity of a place? The documentary offers an answer: it is the perspectives that are laid upon it. Nice, more than other cities, offers an example of this. Its image has been built through a history made of desires and projections.
Since the 19th century, the French Riviera has been reshaped according to the needs of those who frequented it. **Tourists, painters, writers**: all have participated in this metamorphosis. The documentary shows that **this transformation** is the result of a “Pygmalion-love.” The place has been shaped, dreamed, reinvented continually.
**Archival images intersect with those of today.** The film navigates between the past and the present, between memories and current reality. Light, a central element of the work, serves as a guiding thread. It is the element that connects the artists together, like a common language.
Through this approach, the documentary does not offer a fixed narrative. It rather invites us to observe how **a collective imagination** has taken shape. Nice thus becomes a mirror. It reflects both a local history and larger representations that transcend the city to touch upon the very idea of the Mediterranean.
This work is not limited to painting or literature. It also includes cinema, with references to Jean Vigo or Francis Scott Fitzgerald, who drew from the ambiance of the French Riviera. Each creation, each gaze, contributes to enriching a multifaceted portrait.
In the background, **the documentary questions our relationship with the places we inhabit or visit.** What do we see there? What do we project? And what remains once the illusions have dissipated?
By offering this blend of memory, art, and social history, the film allows us to better understand how a city can be invented and reinvented by those who live in or pass through it. Nice does not appear simply as a backdrop. It becomes a collective narrative, perpetually in motion.
The documentary *Nice, the Artists, and the Azure* is available on replay on Arte and on YouTube for a limited time.
