Nice, du rivage à la mer

Through the exhibition “Nice, from the shore to the sea”, the Masséna Museum explores the relationships that Nice has maintained, throughout its history, with the Mediterranean. From prehistory to today, from the Nikaïa of the Greeks to the winter resort of Queen Victoria, the city has never stopped reinventing its relationship with the shore. Sometimes, fearing threats, it has turned away from them and protected itself. Often, it has made it the horizon of its audacity and its dreams.

Today, while the United Nations Conference on the Ocean is being held within its walls, Nice is also questioning, more than ever, its responsibility towards this natural environment, which is both fragile and threatened.

We are thus reminded of Paul Valéry's wish, at the time of the creation, in 1933, on the Promenade des Anglais, of the Mediterranean University Center: "It is to be hoped, (...) that our Center will one day manifest itself and impose itself as the place of development of Mediterranean knowledge, the point where an increasingly clear and complete awareness of the function of this privileged sea in the development of the ideals and resources of man is formed".

These relationships will be evoked from several approaches that are translated into a route of rooms in stages:
- The Mediterranean: from the origins to the myth
- The migration of religions from East to West, the traveling Saints
- The dreaded sea
- The late creation of a port, trade and fishing
- The sea as an object of study
- The invention of the shore, walks and baths
- The concern for the protection of the shore and the sea