4 Days in Nice: The First-Timer Itinerary

Four days is where Nice stops feeling like a checklist and starts feeling like a place you actually know. This plan never leaves the city; everything here, the hill, the harbor, the museums, the coastline, is inside Nice’s own limits, and four days is enough to do all of it without sprinting.

Day Focus
1 Promenade, Vieux Nice, Cours Saleya, Castle Hill at golden hour
2 Market return, Place Masséna, Chagall Museum, Jardin Albert 1er
3 Cimiez: Matisse Museum, monastery gardens, Roman arena
4 Mont Boron hike, Port Lympia, Rauba-Capeu

Book these before you go

Day 1: The Core Loop

Land at Nice Côte d’Azur, then take Tram Line 2 toward Port Lympia (not the Centre Administratif branch, an easy wrong turn) into Jean-Médecin, about 30 minutes for 1.70 EUR. The airport machines themselves only sell a 10 EUR round-trip ticket, so grab the Lignes d’Azur app or a refundable 2 EUR reusable card if you want the cheap single fare. Taxis run an official 32 EUR flat rate, insist on it before the meter starts since some drivers try running it up toward 45 to 50 EUR instead.

Walk the Promenade des Anglais, all seven free kilometers with the blue chairs along it (still being reinstalled in stages after a spring 2026 restoration). Cut into Vieux Nice for Cours Saleya, flowers and produce Tuesday through Sunday mornings, an antiques and brocante market instead on Mondays. Socca at Chez Pipo on rue Bavastro or a market stall runs you roughly 12 EUR or less. Wander the pastel baroque streets in the afternoon, pass the old Palace of the Dukes of Savoy (now City Hall), and skip lunch on Cours Saleya or Place Rossetti themselves, walk a street or two back for genuinely better food. End the day at Castle Hill for golden hour: no actual castle up there since 1706, just ruins, a park, a waterfall, and the best view in the city, free, with a public lift saving the stair climb if you want it. Dinner at Lou Balico or Acchiardo for real daube or ratatouille, 15 to 25 EUR.

Day 2: Markets and Culture

Morning back at Cours Saleya before 9am for the freshest produce, then Place Masséna for the checkerboard paving and the Fontaine du Soleil, whose Apollo statue was controversial enough at its unveiling to be scaled back and later removed for decades before returning in 2011. In the afternoon, pick one museum: the Chagall Museum (Musée National Marc Chagall), 8 EUR standard rising to 10 EUR during exhibitions, closed Tuesdays, free the first Sunday of the month, and NOT the same building as the Matisse Museum up in Cimiez, a distinction plenty of content still gets wrong. Round out the afternoon with a walk through Jardin Albert 1er, a genuinely peaceful strip of fountains and Mediterranean greenery between the Promenade and Place Masséna. Dinner in Vieux Nice, then a sunset walk back along the promenade.

Day 3: Cimiez

Bus 5, 16, or 18 up to Cimiez, the hillside neighborhood that was the Roman town of Cemenelum before Nice existed as a name. The Matisse Museum occupies a 17th-century Genoese villa here, 12 EUR standard entry, closed Tuesdays, 10am to 6pm April through October. Next door, the Monastère Notre-Dame de Cimiez has a rose garden and the cemetery where Matisse and Renoir are both buried. Round out the cluster with the 2nd-century Roman arena and bath ruins and the small archaeological museum on site, 6 EUR, free for under-18 residents; the arena doubles as a Nice Jazz Festival stage every July. If you’re doing two or more municipal museums this trip, the four-day multi-museum pass at 15 EUR is worth grabbing (it covers Matisse, not Chagall, since Chagall is nationally administered). Dinner leaning into Provençal cooking somewhere in Vieux Nice.

Day 4: Mont Boron and the Port

Morning belongs to Mont Boron, the forested hilltop park east of the port with a 16th-century fort at its summit and a 1.5 to 2.5 hour round-trip hike from the Vigier park entrance. The views, stretching from Cap Ferrat to the Esterel massif, arguably beat Castle Hill’s, at the cost of real legwork; fewer visitors make this climb, which is exactly why it’s worth it. Come down for lunch, then spend the afternoon at Port Lympia, the working harbor with colorful Genoese facades and Corsica ferry connections, followed by the climb to the Monument aux Morts at Rauba-Capeu, a WWI memorial carved into the cliff with a free harbor-and-sea view most Promenade-focused visitors never see. If your legs are done for the day, a short sightseeing boat trip along the Baie des Anges is the lower-effort version of the same coastline, 20 to 35 EUR for about an hour. Dinner near the port with a seafood focus, then a last relaxed evening around the harbor.

Tips and Essentials

Lignes d’Azur runs the tram and bus network; a single fare is 1.70 EUR with a 74-minute transfer window, or grab a day pass for 7 EUR if you’re moving around a lot. Basic French goes a long way with locals even though most Niçois speak English. Expect a mild Mediterranean climate overall, with genuinely hot stretches in July and August.

Additional Tips

Watch your belongings closely at the Grand Arenas tram stop near the airport, a known pickpocket spot, and stay similarly alert in crowded Old Town alleys and around the market. Don’t leave a bag unattended on the beach while you’re swimming either, that’s a specifically rising risk here. Book accommodations and popular restaurants ahead if you’re traveling in peak summer, and don’t leave without trying a proper salade niçoise, which by tradition skips cooked potatoes and green beans entirely in favor of raw vegetables, tuna or anchovies, egg, and olives.

If your schedule is flexible at all, shift this whole trip to May-June or September instead of peak summer. Same Mediterranean water, half the crowds, and hotel prices that won’t wreck your budget. For the full spread of neighborhoods, food, and museums this itinerary only has room to touch, our Nice guide goes deeper, and the 5-day itinerary adds a second museum day if four isn’t enough for you.