A game of pétanque played with square boules, an astonishing aerial well, stained-plastic windows, a marble bench built in memory of the Queen of England’s haemophiliac son, the instruments of the Passion of Christ, a cannon that fires cherry stones, a good-luck pig, a mysterious pyramid, a monument to secret agents, an entire village that ‘moved house’, a gas mask for horses, a statue sculpted by Saint Luke, a chapel showing the dead rising from their tombs, a trapdoor in the nave of a church that opens onto a rushing torrent, a restaurant in an Orient Express railway car, Babar’s beach, Tintin’s Black Island, and Sleeping Beauty’s chateau, a chance to admire the Riviera’s first pair of naked breasts, or spend the night sleeping in a tree … The French Riviera is not limited to the clichés of its beaches, private yachts and luxury hotels.
