Somerset Maugham once famously mused that the French Riviera was a ‘sunny place for shady people’ and bold and brashy Nice does its best to epitomise this nefariously glamorous reputation. A collage of sultry cool and seedy decadence, Nice is a city that is hard not to react to and become enveloped in.

The traffic may be a nightmare and the tourist hordes can be suffocating in summer, but amongst the tack and the bawdy streets are a smattering of art galleries and museums (19 in total), a lively old quarter and the wide sweep of Mediterranean seafront that brought visitors here in the first place.

Nice today very much retains its spilt personality; you can revel in the worlds of such artistic greats as Matisse, Chagall and Picasso, marvelling at the famed local light that has always made Nice a Mecca for artists. Then 10 minutes later you can delve beyond the centre and enter the world of the insalubrious graffiti blighted suburbs that help make this the fifth largest city in France.

Nice may not always be a relaxed getaway or have the same exclusivity that its fin-de-siecle high society patrons once sought, but it has plenty to keep visitors occupied in its own right as well as making a convenient base for longer explorations of the Côte D’Azur. If it all gets too much, you can do what people have being doing for centuries and turn your back on Nice and enjoy those sweeping Mediterranean views.