La Croisette
A seafront of palms and grand hotels.
Jenny Andersson / News Oresund — CC BY 2.0 · Agence Rol. Agence photographique (commanditaire) — Public domain · Agence Rol. Agence photographique (commanditaire) — Public domain · Gargarapalvin — CC BY-SA 4.0
**Avoid May** unless the festival is why you are coming: for a fortnight hotel prices multiply, parts of the Croisette close and the town belongs to the press and the industry rather than to visitors. The best months are **April, June and September**: warm sea, pleasant weather and relatively sane prices. July and August are hot and packed with French holidaymakers. Winter is quiet and mild but much of the beach life shuts.
Only partly. Most of the sand in front of the Croisette is **divided into private beaches** run by hotels and restaurants, where you pay for a lounger and parasol (steeply in high season). But there are **free public beaches** between them, and the widest are west of the centre toward the Plage du Midi and on toward La Bocca. With a family and a budget: head west — same sand, same water, no bill.
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Cannes was a small fishing town that became the most famous address on the French Riviera, and the story starts with an accident: in 1834 the British **Lord Brougham** was on his way to Italy when a cholera quarantine stopped him, and he spent the night in Cannes — liked it, built a villa and returned every winter, and the English and Russian aristocracy followed. Fishing became the past and hotels the present. Today the town is two parallel lines: **La Croisette** on the sea with its grand hotels, sand and palms, and **Rue d'Antibes** behind it with the shops — and between them the Palais des Festivals with its famous red steps. Above all of it stands **Le Suquet**, the old quarter on the hill, which is what remains of the original town. Its great fame is the **Cannes Film Festival** every May since 1946 (it was planned for 1939 and cancelled by the war): a fortnight in which the town fills with stars and press, prices multiply and whole areas close. Outside May, Cannes is an elegant, relatively quiet seaside town — and that is the better time to see it.
A seafront of palms and grand hotels.
The Palais des Festivals and the staircase you know from television.
The old quarter on the hill — Cannes before it was Cannes.
06400 Cannes, Alpes-Maritimes