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Queen Victoria of England

First visited the French Riviera in 1882

featured in Famous residents Updated

It’s hard to overstate the importance of Queen Victoria of England in the transformation of the French Riviera from sleepy rural backwater into a glittering playground for royals and celebrities.

When the Queen of England first visited in 1882, the few thousand English in the area were gaunt pale things in the dying throes of tuberculosis, who had flocked here after an English doctor had written a book about the healing air of Menton. It was a place of convalescence and death among the citrus groves, promising miracles under the Mediterranean sky. Yet when the Queen set herself up in a villa in Menton on her first visit in 1882, European heads of state and celebrities were quick to follow. The number of English visitors skyrocketed, from 15000 to 100 000 in less than 20 years, and the Queen would come back 8 times, spending more than a year of her life in what she called ‘the sunny, flowery south’.

The English Queen had given the Cote d’Azur the royal seal of approval as it were, and sheepfolds and lonely cliffs were soon replaced by ornate carriages, railways and vast villas. High English society had found its place in the sun. The widow queen so famous for strict moral values and dressing in mourning black apparently reacted with such childish delight to the beauty and people of the French Riviera that one of her maidservants commented: ‘she enjoys everything as if she were 17 instead of 72".

She threw flowers at the Battle of the Flowers on the Promenade des Anglais, rode on donkey carts up medieval tracks and was once told off for trampling the flower beds at the villa of Alice de Rothschild in Grasse- after which lecture the Queen referred to her friend Miss Rothschild as ‘The All-Powerful One.’

She even fancied a shepherd or two, writing in a letter that they were "very picturesque looking, wearing knee breeches, sort of white stockings and leggings, and a large black felt hat…Some are very handsome boys". She’d been widowed for a while by then.

Queen Victoria was much loved by the locals- for she not only entertained royals and the wealthy, but also received locals at the hotel she stayed at in Cimiez, Nice- including a troupe of fishwives who tried to kiss her on both cheeks! She offered her hand, of course, to put an end to such nonsense, but declared them ‘most friendly.’ She also gave money to local beggars, deciding that ‘I know I am sometimes exploited, but I prefer to make a mistake in giving than making a mistake in not giving.’ She was also very active in local charities, including the Society for the Protection of Animals, and you can still find a humble water trough she had built for thirsty horses on the high trail between Nice and Villefranche.

She was predictably not amused by Monaco, seeing it as a den of iniquity- and in fact it was on the Riviera, at Hyeres, that she famously uttered the phrase: ‘We are not amused’ after being told an off-colour joke.

One of her children died along this stretch of coast. Her youngest, Prince Leopold died in Cannes after slipping over at the yacht club. He had haemophilia and bled to death from his injuries, and St George Church was built in his honour.

What is so strange about the whole affair is how few people know how much time one of England’s most important monarchs spent here on the Cote d’Azur, or how much she loved it. Some historians even credit her love affair with the Riviera for the improvement of relations between England and France after so many centuries of war and hatred.

For more about the fascinating royal history of the Riviera, read Queen Victoria and the Discovery of the Riviera, by Michael Nelson.