What to See in Menton - Top Sights and Attractions

1800s garden with exotic flora. The Jardin botanique exotique de Menton, also known as the Jardin botanique exotique du Val Rahmeh, is a botanical garden located off Avenue St Jacques, Menton, Alpes-Maritimes, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France. It is open daily except Tuesday; an admission fee is charged.

The garden can be traced back to 1875 when the De Monléon family constructed the property. In 1905 Lord Percy Radcliffe, former governor of Malta, with his spouse Rahmeh acquired the property, adding adjacent farmland to form a garden. In 1957 Miss May Sherwood Campbell acquired the property and a second garden, now accessed by a bridge, and created a pond with water hyacinths, water lilies, and papyrus. In 1966 she donated her property to the nation, which transferred it to the Ministry of National Education. It then became a research center for Mediterranean flora managed by the National Museum of Natural History. The garden opened to the public in 1967.

Today the garden contains some 1,500 taxa growing within a microclimate of high humidity where temperatures rarely fall below 5 °C (41 °F) in winter. It features Sophora toromiro (a species of small trees since disappeared from Easter Island), as well as exceptional olive trees (more than 400 years old) and collections of exotic plants including palm trees, chorisia, datura, and lotus, plus fine collections of citrus, olives, and palm trees. Rare species include Aloe marlothii, Araucaria columnaris, Castanospermum australe (Moreton Bay chestnut), Cnicothamnus lorentzi, and Ficus religiosa. A small rainforest area contains bamboo, gingers, philodendrons, tropical fruit trees, and a path through spices and herbs. The garden also contains an excellent Musa basjoo and a two Chorisia speciosa specimens.^[3]

Picturesque garden of a famous writer. Fontana Rosa is a historic garden situated on the Avenue Blasco Ibáñez in Menton, Alpes-Maritimes, on the French Riviera.

The Spanish writer Vicente Blasco Ibáñez (1869–1928) began to build it from 1922 on, and he set up home here with his second wife, Elena, and died there in 1928.

This garden with Spanish and Menton pottery is found in avenue Blasco Ibanez, near Garavan station, and was created a Historical Monument in 1990.

It is also called "Le Jardin des Romanciers" (El Jardín de los Novelistas/The Garden of Novelists), and was frequented by celebrities such as Jean Cocteau. It was the place where Blasco Ibáñez wrote the novel Mare Nostrum (filmed in 1926 as Torrent).

The garden inspired by Andalusian and Arabian-Persian styles contains species such as Ficus macrophylla, Araucaria heterophylla, palm trees, banana trees or scented rosebushes. It is a tribute to Vicente's favourite writers : Cervantes, Dickens, Shakespeare or Honoré de Balzac, whose busts can be found at the entrance and to whom he dedicated several fountains and rotundas.

Its main buildings are a small elevated villa with polychromatic pottery which houses a library and a personal movie projector room, and a main house (Villa Emilia) in the lower part of the property that dates from the 19th century. The architectural complex also has an aquarium, a colonnade, a concrete pergola, pillars, flower vases, ceramic-panelled benches around the main house and a big round, steel pergola covering a long staircase in the middle of the property.

After Blasco Ibáñez's death here, his son inherited the property. In 1939, it was sacked during the war and later abandoned for more than thirty years. Blasco Ibáñez's son gave it to the commune of Menton in 1970. Since 1985, the buildings have been restored and, as from 1991, the pottery too. Still undergoing restoration, the garden may be visited only by guided tour, on Monday and Friday at 10am.^[5]

Tranquil garden with unusual plantings. Serre de la Madone is a garden in France notable for its design and rare plantings. It is located at 74, Route de Gorbio, Menton, Alpes-Maritimes, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France. It is open to the public during the warm months of the year. In 2008, it was being restored to its former condition.

The garden was created in 1924–1939 by Lawrence Johnston, who had earlier created in Britain the celebrated Hidcote Manor Garden (1907). It lies on a hillside in the Gorbio valley, with a farmhouse to which Johnston added two large wings. Johnston traveled the world collecting plants, and Serre de la Madone offered an excellent site for plants from subtropical regions. Over the years he created a series of terraces among old olive trees, planted and tended by twelve gardeners.

After Johnston's death in 1958 owners maintained it with varying degrees of respect for the original plantings. In 1999 the property was purchased by the non-profit Conservatoire du littoral, who began restoring it to Johnson's design.

Today the garden contains a collection of unusual subtropical plants centered on a double pool, and rising in terraces. As at Hidcote, Johnson used hedges and low walls to divide the garden into discrete areas. Notable plant specimens include a superb Mahonia siamensis and Arbutus unedo, umbrella pines, Buddleja officinalis, Rosa chinensis, and bamboo, as well as good collections of cycads and succulents from around the world.^[6]

Garden in Menton, France. Les Colombières is a villa in Menton, in the Alpes-Maritimes department on the French Riviera. The gardens of the villa were designed by Ferdinand Bac between 1918 and 1927. Bac also designed modernist furniture for the house and personally painted all the villa's frescos and paintings. The gardens are 7.4 acres in size, and have been described as full of "wit, brilliance and imagination" that "inspire both the intellect and the imagination".

Bac's friends Émile and Caroline Ladan-Bockairy bought the Domaine des Colombières in 1918; before this, it was the property of the philosopher Alfred Jules Émile Fouillée. The Ladan-Bockairys invited Bac to come to live with them and to rebuild and enlarge the building. His design for the house drew on his memories from visits to different Mediterranean countries. Bac painted the frescoes in the house and designed the Modernist furniture.

The villa, built in 1790, is set over three storeys, and is 800 square metres in size. It has 14 bedrooms and 13 bathrooms, with an exterior painted red and yellow. The interior of the house is adorned with frescos painted by Bac, featuring idealised landscapes from Mediterranean countries including Greece, Turkey, Italy, and Morocco. Some of the rooms are themed; a carnival scene is depicted in the Venetian Room, a room also decorated with a Murano glass chandelier and gondola lights. Wooden cabinets painted with birds line the Parrot Room.

During the Second World War, the villa was used in the rehabilitation of Italian soldiers and, subsequently, as a bed-and-breakfast. Prominent visitors to Les Colombières included the artist Jean Cocteau and the French war hero Marshal Joseph Joffre.

Bac died in Compiègne in November 1952, aged 93; he survived Émile Ladan-Bockairy by three days. Caroline Ladan-Bockairy lived for several years afterward, and the three of them are buried in a mausoleum on a rock overlooking the garden at Les Colombières.^[7]