Beautiful Port Lympia

In this Article

Partager

Port Lympia is the name given to the port of Nice.

This name comes from the Lympia spring which fed a small lake in a marshy area where work on the port3 began in the middle of the 18th century. Today it is Nice’s main port facility. There is also a small port in the Carras district.

History

The port in the 18th century.
In the 17th century, several projects already included the port and its district in the marshy area of the Lympia valley as an urban expansion project. The first4 by Maurizio Valperga arranges the port with an ellipse-shaped basin. The second of Amedeo di Castellamonte plans to divert the Paillon towards the plain of Lympia by isolating the port from the existing city. The last anonymous where the Paillon does not move and connects the port by routes to the Porte Pairolière anticipating the future axes Ségurane and Cassini.

In 1748, King Charles-Emmanuel III decided to create the future port of Nice in the area known as the Lympia valley, at the foot of the old citadel. Its construction took place over more than a century and a half. The first crate5 of the outer mole was submerged on July 22, 1750 and the first phases of work were attributed to Antonio Devincenti. In 1761, the digging of the first of the two basins was well advanced and the mole was extended to a hundred and ten meters in length. In 1770, the rock was dug on the southern slope of the Château to establish the rue des Ponchettes which linked the town to the port in 1772. The inner mole was completed in 17926, as was the Carénage spur built at the head of the mole, the west of Lazaret beach, but the digging is incomplete and all the quays have yet to be built. At the same time, the engineers realize that the port is too narrow. As a result, from 1778 to 1840, the annexed project of the port and its district progressed constantly, while the basin was already in operation. Successive plans7 by the architects Filippo Nicolis, Comte de Robilant (1723-1783) in 1778-1780-1786, Antoine Verani in 1791, De Molliere in 1792, Caravadossi in 1804 introduce over the projects the idea of a composition symmetrical with a monumental rectilinear basin.

Pin to board
Share on facebook
Next Articles

Galerie Lympia

Nice’s coolest new gallery space is housed in this former galley slaves’ prison down by the port. Opened in 2017 by the Alpes-Maritimes’ departmental government after a €2.1-million restoration project,

Read more

Palais Lascaris

Baroque Palais Lascaris is a 17th-century mansion housing a frescoed orgy of Flemish tapestries, faience and gloomy religious paintings, along with a collection of period musical instruments. On the ground

Read more

L’Observatoire de Nice

Visible in the dry hills to the north of Nice is the white dome of the city’s observatory, founded in 1881 on the summit of Mont Gros. Guided visits (in

Read more

Gare du Sud

This cool old 19th-century railway station was originally built to provide train service from Nice into the Alps. A century later, when it was replaced by the nearby Gare de

Read more

Monastère Notre Dame de Cimiez

Painters Henri Matisse and Raoul Dufy are buried in the cemetery of this monastery, a five-minute walk across the park from the Musée Matisse. To reach Matisse’s grave, turn left

Read more

Le Régina

Originally Queen Victoria’s wintering palace, this monumental edifice was subsequently converted into apartments. In the 1940s Matisse lived here, using one unit as a studio and another as his home,

Read more

Promenade du Paillon

It’s hard to imagine that this beautifully landscaped park was once a bus station, a multistorey car park and an ill-loved square. Completed in October 2013, the park unfolds from

Read more

Musée Archéologique de Nice

The hodgepodge of Roman artefacts in this archaeological museum is rather ho-hum – but if you’ve already bought a Nice museum pass, it’s worth a visit just to wander the

Read more

Hôtel Negresco

A landmark building overlooking the grand sweep of the Promenade des Anglais, built in 1912 for Romanian innkeeper Henri Negresco. Its rosy-pink dome and lavish façade makes for a classic

Read more