This work is both the journal of a tourist, a guide for the visitor, the history of the places visited, and a novel or rather a romantic saga.
Stéphen Liégeard is, above all, the inventor of the term: Côte d’Azur. The debates have been like Byzantine quarrels concerning the extent of this Côte d’Azur. However, such discussions were quite unnecessary, as the author starts his long journey in Marseille and ends it in Genoa.
Thus, he leads us along the paths, not forgetting detours towards the interior lands, revisiting past roads, where we sometimes get lost. Then, by evoking kings, queens, princes, dukes, barons, and emperors—those of history and those of high society—he describes this society of the late 19th century.
He reveals the birth of Monte Carlo, the casinos. The roads, still often mule tracks, the railway that shortens distances. The Côte d’Azur and its evolution, the British who were the promoters of the winter season, the patients dying of apoplexy and recovering. The climate, the agriculture, the flowers, the festivities.
Stéphen Liégeard published his book in 1887-1888, during the full bloom of this Côte d’Azur, which then saw its development primarily between Cannes and Menton. Hyères and San Remo were withdrawn from this tourist boom.
So why extend from Marseille to Genoa? The two great Mediterranean ports not being tourist-oriented. It is probably for the sake of unity, convenience that the author, occasionally turning historian, transcends the tourist framework to better align with History and history, both grand and small.
The Côte d’Azur is, in any case, still the best guide to understanding these shores of the great blue sea where everything began a long time ago, since Adam and Eve, but there, we enter the realm of legend.
Thierry Jan
