TDN Weekend

their Louis Vuitton steamers and set off for paradise new, they built a racecourse. And what a place they chose to build it. On a sundrenched strand, fringed with the thick shade of cypresses and flamboyant palms, at one end of that wide bay of Med- iterranean from Antibes to Nice, with away to the north a steep ancient village and be- yond it the snow-topped little brothers of the mountain range that becomes the Alps. HIPPODROME DE LA CÔTE D'AZUR, embla- zoned in red neon sans serif capital letters across the top of the whole length of the grandstand – and visible in reverse from an ugly stretch of the Avignon-to-Monaco au- toroute which once simply divided dazzling racecourse from dusty village but which has become bedraggled with dozens of graffi- ti-raddled warehouses and other eyesores. Strangers to the whole Riviera backstory might wonder, for a moment, what all the fuss is about: the last three or four decades of the 1900s were certainly not kind to the aesthetics of the area. Pylons, flyovers, gar- bage, signage. It's a blight that besets much of Provence, places which were simple, and simply lovely, falling into pastiches of them- selves: take Picasso's dozy hilltop village of Mougins, now the venue for self-proclaimed artists with pompously appelated 'ateliers' propping up misbegotten canvases down every bougainvillea-lined back alley. Yet the magic remains. Amid all the im- perfections, when you stay here, race here, eat and drink, and best of all, walk here, you experience life somehow perfected. It spar- kles, and so do you. 65

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