Agay Beachfront
Cottage saint Raphael French Riviera
The seaside
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Agay Beachfront
Cottage saint Raphael French Riviera
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The seaside
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Map of the kitchen.
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Fully Equipped kitchen.
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View from the kitchen to the living room
and terrace.
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Agay Beachfront
Cottage saint Raphael French Riviera
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The seaside
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The Corniche d'Or.
Carved into the rocks, La
Corniche d'Or links Saint-Raphaël to Cannes and was opened in 1903 by
the Touring Club de France. It overhangs a sea of extraordinary clarity.
It was in 1903 that the costal link was completed between the Var and the Alpes-Maritimes,
a real Riviera postcard famous throughout the world.
Two centuries after the Via Aurelia : In many places, this road, which had become
little more than a bad path, hardly used apart from a few customs officers watching
the shore, follows the same route the Via Aurelia took, a Roman road built two
centuries before, then abandoned following barbaric invasions leaving the coast
practically deserted for fifteen centuries.
The new road was built because of several favourable factors coming together
at the same time: tourists, looking for new places to explore and visit at a
time when the birth of the automobile offered them new perspectives, found a
powerful ear with the Touring Club de France, who launched the venture. Locals
joined in with enthusiasm.
Success was immediate: in fact the road made a return journey possible between
the two big coastal towns in a single day, past magnificent countryside bringing
together the picturesque views on the spot and the grandeur of the panorama.
In spite of the scares caused by the peaks, the bends, the winding, narrow road
hardly three metres wide it was on foot, on horseback, on cycles and in cars
that the road was carved out, namely by the ancestors of the present sovereigns
of Denmark and Holland.
Hardly changed by the First World War, it was between the wars, again thanks
to the Touring Club, that it was widened. The aim: certainly, to respond to
the growing needs of the tourist traffic, but also, in a less obvious but just
as powerful a way, to bow to the demands of urban development which was in its
infancy along these shores.
Right across the commune of Thoule, this meant in particular the extraordinary
work of stone cutters working their way into the red porphyries at the rate
of three stones per day and per worker. Under the leadership of the Highways
Department, an immigrant labour force from Italy showed proof of great know-how,
building retaining walls, parapets, pavement kerbs in particular, with such
skill and dexterity as is rarely found today, taking our breath away in admiration
if only we could take the trouble to look at them properly.
During the thirties, this policy of big public works had the effect of lessening
the devastating effects of the economic crisis that was raging, by enabling
the heads of families from across the Alps to feed their families, a vital need
in the absence of any social security.
The Second World War was to see the Corniche dOr used first of all by the retreating
French army, fleeing from Menton before the Italian invasion in June 1940, then
serving as a border under the Occupation between military no-go areas, before
the general evacuation preceding the 1944 landings.
Badly damaged in various places, the road was mended by prisoners of war. Then
in the mid fifties, under pressure from the increasing use of cars, a new road
widening scheme was envisaged which would have meant it losing all its picturesque
charm, to be finally abandoned in favour of building the motorway, thus in some
way tripling the roads crossing the Esterel. Old pictures of Anthéor:
Anthéor
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Gautier Pierre et Florence |
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