Very often, these are common and modest places. But famous people lived there. An opportunity to remember them in places which were familiar to them.
Notice :
- we chose to limit the list to real inhabitants of the city, people who really lived here.
The list of people who came on vacation, to shoot a film or give a concert is much too long to present them all, from the queen Victoria to the czar Alexander the 2nd, including Lenine. - we chose to present only people whose fame went beyond the French borders. The french version of this article also includes people who are probably not known out of our borders.
- to saveguard their tranquility, we will not say anything about people who still live in the area
If you want to find graves of famous people on the Riviera, read Here rest.
Guillaume Apollinaire's original name was Wilhem Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky. He is one of the most famous French poet of the 20th century. He was born in Rome from a polish mother and an italian father, who were not married.
He tried to get his baccalaureat (the diploma at the end of high school) in Nice in 1897 in the lycée Masséna but failed. He was 17.
After a few monthes in Paris, he came back to Nice and there, met "Lou", and fell in love with her. WWI began and he volunteered to fight. He wrote to her from the front line during one year. In 1915, he met an other girl in the Nice train station, Madeleine Pagès. In 1916, he came back from the war, severely wounded. He was taken to an hospital in Paris. The french citizenship and his Appolinaire name had just been officially given to him for his bravery on the front.
The enrollment office where he volunteered to fight for France is located 9 rue Alfred Mortier.
Il died in Paris on Nov. the 9th 1918, because of the spanish flu.
His books.
In the 19th century, tuberculosis killed millions of people. A german physician, Koch, had discovered the micro organism responsible for the disease. But he did not succed in creating a vaccine against it. Albert Calemette was a physician working for the Pasteur Institute. With a vet of the same Institute, Guérin, he created this vaccine : the BCG.
Albert Calmette was born in Nice in 1863, in a house located 10 rue de la Préfecture. His mother died when he was 2 y.o. When he was 6, his father, a civil servant in the Prefecture was transfered to Bordeaux and took his family along with him. Albert Calmette would never live in Nice again. He died in 1933.
René Cassin's family lived in Nice, 10 rue de l'Hotel des Postes. his parents had a trade of wine on the boulevard Stalingrad, called le Chais Lympia. He was born in a jewish family. His father was already born in Nice just before the city became French.
He studied in the lycée Masséna (highschool) which he entered in 1901. Then he left Nice to study law in the Aix en Provence university. Doctorate, then war as a private. He was severely wounded in the beginning of WWI.
He became then the representative of France at the Society of Nations, forerunner of UNO.
5 days after the speech of de Gaulle on the BBC, on the 18th of June, 1940, he went to London to keep fighting on, after Petain, head of the French government, had called to a cease fire with the nazis. He was appointed a member of the Free French government by de Gaulle.
After the war, he was a member of the highest French courts : the Conseil d'Etat, the Conseil constitutionnel (he was its president).
He was the main redactor of the Universal declaration for human rights in 1948 and one of the founder of Unesco.
In 1968, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace.
When he came back to Nice, he lived 8 rue Maréchal Joffre.
He died in 1976 and he was transferred to the Panthéon 11 years later.
The first movie James Bond (who played in many other films) owned a magnificent house in Nice between the Carnot Boulevard, (address : 174) et the Jean Lorrain avenue. It is actually located just before the junction of these two streets when you leave Nice towards Villefranche sur Mer.
He bought it in 1970. Located next to the Englishman's castle, the Roc fleuri villa is a palace. 6 floors with a lift, a pool in the garden, an other one inside the house, great view on Nice and the sea, 1000m2 and a 5000m2 garden. Many rooms or inner villas, marble...
You like it? The house was on sale in 2020 for 30 millions €.
This air force general was the last commander of the fighter regiment of the Free French Air Force named "Normandie-Niémen", based in USSR during WWII.
The decision to send pilots to fight along with the soviets (then our allies) against the nazis was taken by the leader of the Free French, Charles de Gaulle, in 1942. The percentage of killed pilots in the regiment was really huge. The bravery of the regiment and its fighting spirit earned the pilots the admiration and gratitude of the Russians. Stalin granted them the right to add "Niemen", a russian river, to the original name of the squadron. At the end of the war, all surviving pilots were allowed to fly back to France in their own fighter aircraft, given to them personally.
The regiment took part in more than 850 air battles and totals more than 270 certified victories.
Born in Nice, Louis Delfino spent his youth in a modest building at the crossroad between the boulevard of Riquier and the boulevard of the Mt Boron. As a teenager, he played soccer at the OGC Nice football club (not yet a professional club) at a good level. His father had died during WWI. His mother worked at the tobacco company. He entered St Cyr, the school educating and training the French army officers.
He died in 1968.
The famous dancer was born in San Francisco in 1877. She had a very important contribution in creating contemporary dance. Her life is marked by the tragedy of the death of her two children, drowned in the Seine river after a car accident, in Paris.
Sho moved to Nice in august 1927.
Shortly after, she was eating in the Negresco restaurant with a friend who has just offered her a scarf. During the diner, a young man she knew offered to take her back home in his convertible car, an Amilcar. She got in the car, wrapping the scarf around her neck. The tragedy occured. The end of the scarf jammed itself in the spokes of one of the wheels. When the car started, the scarf broke her neck. Before the car stopped, her corpse had been thrown on the road.
Isadora Duncan was dead.
Romain Gary was a writer and a novelist, the only one who was awarded 2 times the French most prestigious literary award, the Goncourt Prize, in 1956 and 1975 (the second time under the name of Emile Ajar). He was also an airmen who volunteered in the Free French Air Force during WWII and a "Compagnon de la Libération", this very restricted group of the most distinguished Resistants. After the war, he also became a diplomat.
He was born in Vilan, in the russian empire, in a jewish family. He arrived in Nice at the age of 14, with his mother, in 1928. His name was then Roman Kacew. He studied in the lycée Masséna high school.
His mother found a job as the manager of a small hotel : le Mermont. It is located 7, boulevard Grosso.
He was married to Jane Seberg. When she had an affair with Clint Eastwood, Gary went to Los Angeles to challenge him. Eastwood, knowing Gary's history of fighter thought it wiser and more careful not to confront him.
Romain Gary killed himself in 1980. The historical library of Nice was named after him.
Ses livres.
The movie director was born in 1960 and came to Nice aged 6 with his family, coming from Tunisia. They settled in the Moulins area, a working class district, West of Nice.
Abdellatif Kechiche was an actor at first, playing theater, and in movies.
He got 2 times the French academy awards (Césars) for best film and best director (a total of 4 awards) in 2005 and 2008. In 2013 he got the Palme d'Or of the Cannes film festival.
Ses films.
Joseph Kessel was born in a jewish lithuanian family in 1898. The family fled the pogroms and went to Argentina were Joseph was born. In 1908, after a few years in Russia they settled in Nice, 3 rue Auber. Joseph studied in the lycée Masséna high school before going to Paris.
Kessel became a writer with many best sellers. The Lion, Mermoz, The Army of the Shadows, The Horsemen. Many of his books were adapted to become movies.
During WWI he served as an airman. During WWII he joined the Resistance and then the Free French Air Force in London where Charles de Gaulle, head of the Free French, considered him more useful than in the occupied territories.
With his nephew, Maurice Druon, he wrote the lyrics of the anthem of the Resistance, the "Chant des Partisans" (musique d'Anna Marly)
As a journalist, he travelled all over the world to make reports. Afghanistan, Africa, China, America... In 1962 he was elected in the Académie Française . He died in 1979.
Ses livres.
The jewish nazi-hunter was born in Bucarest in 1935. During WWII his family had found a refuge in Nice. They lived next to Notre Dame, 15, Italy street.
This is where his father was arrested in 1943. Serge was hidden and was not found. First transferred to the nearby hôtel Excelsior where alois brünner, the SS in charge of the final solution in Nice had his office, his father was deported to Auschwitz and did not come back.
Serge Klarsfeld and his wife Beate, a non jewish german searched, found and brought to justice many nazis : barbie, lischka, touvier, brünner, waldheim...
His books.
This composer was born in Nice in a family of italian origins. He spoke the local dialect.
He was a great fan of the football club, OGC Nice, and went very oftent to the Ray Stadium, which no longer exists, to watch the team play.
He was the score composer of almost all Claude Lelouch films. He wrote classics like "the bicycle", for Yves Montand and famous musical scores such as "One man and one woman"'s music, (Claude Lelouch) for which he was nominated for the academy awards in Holywood. He also wrote the score of "Love story", and this time got the Academy award.
He died in 2018.
His records.
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This writer was born in Nice in 1940 in a family from Britany, but of which several generations had lived in Mauritius. During the war, he was a refugee in Roquebillère with his mother and his brother. His father, an Englishman, was a surgeon in the army and couldn't come back to France.
He lived place de l'Ile de Beauté, near the port, during his youth.
He travelled to Nigeria in 1948 to visit his father but came back to Nice in 1949. He studied at the Masséna high school in Nice and then in the litterature university in the same city.
He repeatedly expressed mixed feelings about the city where he did not feel home.
He wrote a lot of books, and has a passion for trips which have a major part in his artwork. He got the french literary award Prix Renaudot in 1963 for "Le Procès Verbal", written in Nice the previous year. He later got the Nobel Prize for litterature in 2008.
His books.
The winner of the 1937 Nobel Prize for Litterature, who was born in 1881, lived in Nice at the Grand Palais, 2 Bvd de Cimiez.
Depending on the sources, he came there as early as 1934 or came later to find there a refuge during the war, his place having been occupied by the nazis. No matter what, he stayed there until the end of the war before going back to Paris.
He is now buried in Nice.
His books.
The famous Italian composer and violinist lived in Nice the last years of his life and died here. (Nice was not yet French at the time, but a part of the Savoy dukedom.)
The earl of Cessole, president of the Senate of Nice was his friend. He asked him to come in the city in 1836. For a few times, the musician lived in the mansion of the earl, avenue de Sévigné, (now the bishop's palace).
Then he settled 23 rue du Gouvernement, which is now the Prefecture street.
He died on May the 27th, 1840 in this house.
A personnal intervention of the earl of Cessole was needed because the bishop of Nice wanted his body dumped in the Paillon river and had refused the corpse a christian burial to this "Musician of the devil".
His works.
Pierre Auguste Renoir is one of the masters of impressionnism. He had a workshop in Nice from 1911 to his death in 1919. It was one the banks of the Paillon river, at the corner of the rue Mortier and the quai St Jean Baptiste, today an avenue with the same name. Above was a flat which he rented and where he stayed in winter. He was treated there and the Massena high school where his younger son used to study was not far.
At that time, diminished by age and disease, he began to produce sculptures, associated with Richard Guino.
His permanent residence was in Cagnes sur Mer in the domaine des Collettes, which can be visited.
He is (among other children) the father of the famous movie director Jean Renoir.
Books on Auguste Renoir.
Antoine de St Exupéry was a pilot of the airmail company Aéropostale linking France to Argentina and Chile, and a writer.
His world famous novel, "The Little Prince", which he wrote in 1943 while he was in New York, is the most translated book in the world (over 220 langages).
In 1931 he got married in the Nice city hall with Consuelo Gomez, the young widow of a very wealthy man from Guatemala. They lived in her house, "El Mirador". We are not sure where exactly this house was. According to one source, it was in Cimiez, but according to an other one it was in Fabron, near Mount Rabeau. Contact us if you have information about the location of the villa.
Although he was too old to fight, St Exupéry volunteered to fight the nazis during WWII. He was shot down during a observation flight, near Marseilles, over the sea, the 31st of July 1944. The wreck of his aircraft was found a few years ago, and his bracelet too.
Ses livres.
Igor Stravinski already was a famous composer when he settled in Nice with his family in 1924. He had already composed the famous "Rite of spring" and changed music.
Born in Russia in 1882, Stravinsky later also became French and American. He lived on the Mount Boron, East of Nice.
In Nice, he wrote among other works "Oedipe King", an opera.
In 1940, he left France to find a refuge in the USA.
His work.
For many years she was France's favorite politician. She had been minister of Health and in charge of writing and defending the law allowing abortion in France, in the 70's. She was the first elected President of the European Parliament.
She was born and raised in Nice. Her birth occured 50 avenue Clémenceau in 1927, in a jewish family named Jacob. After the 1929 crisis the family had to move rue Cluvier.
She studied at the young girls high school, the lycée Calmette, until one day, during WWII, the directress told her that her coming to the high school was not "desired" any longer.
She was then hidden by a teacher of the Massena high school in her place, Palais de Nice, 28 boulevard Carabacel. Nonetheless she was arrested in the street in 1944 and was sent to the hotel Excelsior, the headquarter where the SS organised the hunt for Jews in Nice, before she was transferred to Drancy and then Auschwitz. She survived and came back.
She died in 2017.
Her corpse was transferred to the Panthéon in Paris in 2018, the monument where France honors its most distinguished children.
Livres by or about Simone Veil.