Menton France

Menton is the last French town before Italy, and it behaves like it – all ochre and apricot and faded rose, stacked up a hillside behind a Baroque church, with Italian spoken in the market and lemons growing outdoors in January. It is the warmest corner of France and quite possibly the prettiest, and it is astonishing to me how few people stop.

Everyone drives past on the way to Monaco. That is their loss and your opportunity: this is the stretch of the Riviera where you can still have a morning to yourself.

Here is the whole brief – when to come, where to stay, the gardens that make this town extraordinary, and the one museum story almost every guide gets wrong.