The guide · Cap d’Antibes
Walk the gates. Know the ground.
Thirty-three gates in five walks, written by VERA from the record and from the road – what to look for at each one, and what the house behind it has been. Then the shore path, the gardens you can walk into, the plateau, and every beach by the road you reach it from.
Walk the gates
Five walks, thirty-three gates.
Every stop is a gate you can stand at from a public road, a public path or the shore. The walks run in the order you would do them: off the train at Juan-les-Pins, along La Salis and Bacon, round the east shore to La Croë, over the southern tip and back up the west shore to town. Standing at a gate? Photograph it and VERA tells you the plot.
Juan-les-Pins waterfront
Six gates in four hundred metres — and the invention of the summer season on the Riviera.
6 gates312 m13 min
La Salis and Bacon
The oldest private holdings on the Cap, and the three finest gates on the peninsula.
8 gates1.3 km29 min
The east shore to La Croë
Where the estates get large and the walls get high. The longest of the five.
5 gates2.9 km47 min
The southern tip
The grandest ground on the Cap, one gate you can walk through, and one villa that no longer exists.
5 gates1.5 km27 minThe west shore, back to town
Two hotels, a botanist's garden, and a comic singer's face on a gatepost.
9 gates2.5 km47 minThe public Cap
Two paths, five open doors.
The Cap turns a wall to the road and its best front to the sea – and the sea side is public. These are the places you can actually go, with hours as the operators publish them and the date VERA checked them.
The Sentier du Littoral
The shore path around the southern tip. It is the only way to see the back of the great estates, and it is the finest two hours on the Cap.
5 km the walk2 hours medium going3.7 km of it on the rockspathThe Chemin du Calvaire
A stone stair up through the Garoupe oaks to the chapel, the lighthouse and the whole coast laid out at your feet.
100 m of climb2 hours there and back75 m the plateauThe Jardin Thuret
A botanical garden running since 1857, free, on weekdays, and the reason half the exotic trees on this coast are here at all.
1857 foundedfree for individualsgardenThe gardens of Villa Eilenroc
The one great estate on the Cap you can walk into. A villa of the 1860s, a rose garden of hundreds of varieties, and an olive grove planted for children born in 2000.
Saturdays 10.00–17.00€2 admissiongardenThe Garoupe plateau
The top of the Cap: a listed chapel full of sailors' offerings, one of the most powerful lighthouses in the Mediterranean, and nine hectares of oak wood that belong to everybody.
75 m the plateau103 m the lightgardenLa Pinède, Juan-les-Pins
The umbrella pines the resort is named after, and the open-air stage where Jazz à Juan has run since 1960.
1960 Jazz à Juanfree open parkmuseumThe Batterie du Graillon
A coastal battery turned museum, free, in a pine wood above the west shore — and a warning about what happens to a name.
free entryTue–Sat 9.00–17.00How to walk them
From the road only.
Every gate here can be seen from a public road, path or shore. Do not enter, do not ring, do not put a lens through a gate, do not linger. Eilenroc and the Jardin Thuret are the two you may walk into.
A name, a number, a plaque, a bell panel, a street sign. Writing is what ties a gate to a house – and seven of the thirty-three carry a detail from the record that is still standing.
The shore path is rock and steps, closed in a gale. The Calvaire climbs a hundred metres. Nothing here is a promenade, and the tourist office rates most of it medium.
The app
Take the Cap with you.
Add capdantibes.co to your Home Screen: the gate camera, the five walks with directions, the market and the search – as an app, no store, nothing to install.
