The good, bad and ugly sides to the French Riviera – glamour and glitz, or overhyped and overpriced?

The good

The French Riviera has a near monopoly on adjectives beginning with “G”. There’s glittering Cannes; glamorous St Tropez and glitzy Monte Carlo. The descriptive words can be shuffled and supplemented so that during the film festival, Cannes fills with glamorous movie stars, and when the Monaco Grand Prix is on, Port Hercules Marina heaves with gleaming super yachts bobbing on the glitter­ing Mediterranean. To avoid overdosing on Gs, other adjectives are pressed into action. The casinos of Monte Carlo (a district in the Principality of Monaco) are opulent, while displays of wealth are nearly always ostentatious.

The French Riviera is also known as the Cote d’Azur, a term that first appeared as the title of an 1887 book on the area. The Azure Coast’s boundaries are disputed – some say it begins near the city of Toulon; others reckon St Tropez. Either way, the region runs up to the border with Italy and is backed by the Alps, which help to keep all that chilly north European weather at bay.

The first foreign tourists to take advantage of the mild winter climate were British aristocrats, who started arriving at the end of the 18th century. The railway brought more European nobles, followed in turn by artists attracted by the quality of the light and writers attracted by the quality of the wine. The Cannes Film Festival was launched in 1946, cementing the city’s international reputation, and St Tropez never looked back after scenes from the 1956 movie And God Created Woman, starring Brigitte Bardot, were shot in the sleepy fishing village.

Finding the “hidden” Riviera is easier than you might expect. From Cannes, take a 15-minute boat ride to Les Iles de Lérins, an unspoilt archipelago of four islands. Île Sainte Marguerite is criss-crossed with pine-scented paths leading to rocky coves and neighbouring St Honorat has been home to a community of Cistercian monks for 1,500 years. Open to the public, the Abbey of Lérins and the fortified 15th-century monastery are about as tranquil as it gets in this corner of France.

If Monaco is the playground of the rich and famous, Nice is perhaps that playground’s sandpit. The heart and soul of the city is the atmospheric old town and the 7km Promenade des Anglais, a palm-fringed pedestrian space lined with swanky stores and suntrap cafes that overlook the Med. Time your visit for February and join revellers letting their hair down at one of the world’s longest running carnivals. Besides fireworks and feasts, the showpiece of the shindig is the Battle of the Flowers – a procession of floral-themed floats featuring young women in bright costumes who fling freshly cut blooms into the crowds.

On the subject of flowers, head half an hour into the hills from Cannes and you’ll smell the hilltop town of Grasse before you even arrive. The perfume capital of the world produces two-thirds of France’s fragrances but for the olfactorily challenged, the narrow lanes, ramparts and buildings of the medieval settlement are ideal for exploring on foot. Restaurants ranging from modest to Michelin-starred serve Provençal dishes such as ratatouille niçoise, pissaladière (pizza-like onion tart), bouillabaisse (hearty saffron-spiked fish stew) and tapenade (black olive and caper dip). Bon appétit!