The French Riviera ( , Occitan: Còsta Azzura) is one of the most famous resort areas in the world, extending along the Mediterranean Sea west from Menton near the Italian border, including the cities and towns of Monaco, Nice, Antibes, and Cannes. Other sources extend the Côte d'Azur further west to include Saint-Raphaël, Sainte-Maxime, Saint-Tropez, Hyères, Toulon, and Cassis.

From prehistory to the Bronze Age

The Côte d'Azur has been inhabited since prehistoric times. A paleolithic site of a nomad people dating to 950,000 B.C. was discovered in the cave of Vallonet, near Roquebrune-Cap Martin, with stones and bones of animals, including bovines, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus. Other sites were found at the cave of L'Escale, near Saint-Estève Janson (600,000 B.C.), and at Terra Amata (400,000 BC), where a fireplace was discovered, one of the oldest in Europe. The Cosquer Cave, an undersea cave between Cassis and Marseille discovered in 1991, has the oldest man-made art in the region: drawings of bisons, seals, horses and penguins, and outlines of human hands, dating to between 27,000 and 19,000 B.C.

Stone dolmens, monuments from the bronze age, can be found near Draguinan. The Valley of Marvels (Vallée des Merveilles) near Mount Bégo, at 2000m altitude, was apparently an outdoor religious sanctuary with over 40,000 drawings of people and animals.

Greek influence

Beginning in the 7th century B.C., Greek sailors from Asia Minor began to visit and then build trading posts (emporia) along the Côte d'Azur. The first known settlement was at Massalia (now Marseille), with colonists from Phocaea, modern-day Foça in Turkey. Other emporia were started at Olbia (Saint-Pierre de l'Almanarre, near Hyères); Antipolis (Antibes); Nicoea (Nice); and Tauroentum and Rhodanousia (Arles). These settlements, which traded with the inhabitants of the interior, became rivals of the Etruscans and Phoenicians, who also visited the Côte d'Azur. Greek traders went far inland from these emporia by river (the Rhône and the Durance or overland to Burgundy and Switzerland. One enterprising navigator from Marseille, Pytheas, traveled as far as Cornwall in about 325 B.C. in search of tin.

The Celto-Ligurians

At the beginning of the 4th century B.C., the Ligurians, a nomadic Celtic people, invaded the south of France and traveled all the way to Ancient Rome. The Ligurian tribes of the Oxybii and Deceates settled in what is now the Alpes-Maritimes and the Var, building hilltop forts and settlements. They were soon at war with the inhabitants of Massalia, and they helped the passage of Hannibal along the coast on his way to attack Ancient Rome. In the 2nd century B.C., the continuous conflicts persuaded the inhabitants of Massalia to invite the Romans to be their ally against the Ligurians.