Èze

The village clings to its rock 427 metres above the sea, the lanes so steep and tight that the Mediterranean shows through gaps between the houses like blue slashes in the stone. Èze is a medieval eagle's nest on France's Moyenne Corniche between Nice and Monaco, its summit crowned with an exotic garden that sets desert plants against an infinity of water — absurd, and completely compelling.

Èze perches on a rocky promontory on the Moyenne Corniche, and at the summit of the village, among the ruins of the medieval fortress, the Jardin Exotique sets succulents and cacti against a panorama that reaches as far as Saint-Tropez on clear days. The lanes below it are barely a metre wide in places, stone archways and galleries and the scent from the perfumers — Fragonard and Galimard both run tours and workshops here, the Grasse trade's outpost on the coast. Nietzsche came up from the sea on foot during his winters in Nice in the 1880s, working out Zarathustra on the climb, and the path from Èze-sur-Mer to the village carries his name; George Sand came, and later a Swedish prince and the musicians of the twenties. It is small enough that ten minutes covers every lane, and the view keeps you the rest of the afternoon.