Saint-Paul-de-Vence
"An artist paid for a meal with a painting once, and the whole village has been quietly proud of it ever since."
A walled hill village that became an art colony almost by accident, with a legendary hotel wall of paintings and one of France's finest modern art foundations just outside its ramparts.
Saint-Paul-de-Vence sits on a hilltop a few kilometres back from the coast, its sixteenth-century ramparts still fully intact, and the story of how it became one of the most art-saturated small towns in France starts, as far as anyone can tell, with a hotel that let artists eat and drink on credit.
The wall that got paid in paintings
The Colombe d’Or, a hotel and restaurant just outside the village gates, opened in the 1920s and, as the story goes, its owner began accepting artwork in place of cash from painters who couldn’t otherwise afford the bill — Matisse, Picasso, Braque, Léger, Chagall. The result, decades later, is a working restaurant whose dining room and terrace casually display a collection that would anchor a serious museum, a Calder mobile turning gently over the swimming pool as if it were nothing unusual. We had a very good, very expensive lunch there mostly to say we’d sat in the room, and did not regret it.
A foundation built for art, not around it
Just outside the village, the Fondation Maeght was purpose-built in the 1960s as one of the first spaces in Europe designed specifically to show modern art in dialogue with its architecture — Giacometti sculptures standing in a sun-bleached courtyard, a Miró labyrinth of ceramic and sculpture in the garden, light pouring through skylights the architect angled specifically for the paintings inside. It’s a short walk from the village and, unlike the Colombe d’Or, doesn’t require ordering a meal to get in.
When to go: Weekday mornings, before the coach tours from Nice and Cannes arrive — this is one of the most visited villages in France for its size, and it shows by early afternoon. Book the Colombe d’Or ahead if the art-for-lunch pilgrimage is part of your plan.