Merge your guests’ talents around the creators of the Côte d’Azur.

Merge your guests’ talents around the creators of the Côte d’Azur.
Like all Southern Belles, the French Riviera is brimming with sensuality. A seductiveness that spares none of your senses. Listen... craftsmen explain the secrets of working leather (in Eze) or pewter (in Valbonne), of designing jewellery (in Cagnes), the Christmas crib figurines known as santons (in Coursegoules, Breil-sur-Roya or Cabris) or stained glass (in Théoule, at the gateway to the Estérel Mountains).


Watch and admire the art of glassblowers in Biot and practise their alchemy: a few pinches of chromium, cobalt or copper to give your own creations all the colours of the rainbow. Improve your knowledge of perfume by visiting museum-workshops in Grasse, Eze or Cagnes. Better yet: earn your perfumery beginner’s degree by creating your own fragrance under the watchful eye of the “noses” from the region’s finest perfumeries. Let your fingers sense the fragile clay... the better to appreciate the art of the potters of Vallauris as they pull, pinch or smooth the lump of clay on their wheels to obtain shapes so perfect, you would think they were cast.

Teach your brigade the secrets of Mediterranean cuisine.

You like good food ? You have come to the right place ! "Cuisine niçoise", the cooking of Nice, with its local products and sun-drenched recipes, will delight the gourmet within you. Better yet : here, good foods is not sin, it is a blessing ! What besser proof than the contribution of religious institutions ... The nuns at the Abbey of Castagniers make chocolates that are said to be "divine". The monks of Lérins prepare delightful wine and fruit liqueur, called Lérina, while the Fraternité de la Madone d'Utelle uses a 12th-century recipe for lavender wine !


The wine route is not limited to these pious stopovers. Throughout the Alpes-Maritimes to the Var "departements", you can visit more than a hundred estates to sample the famous rosé de Provence. The best known include the wines of Bellet, a vineyard perched in the hills of Nice, AOC (Appellation d'origine contrôlée) since 1941. Here, the tradition goes back the Antiquity, when another of the riches of the Riviera appeared : the olive, whose oil brings its light to local specialities. Discover them in the tasty classes offered by the Lycée Hôtelier in Nice or Chef Roger Vergé's school in Mougins.Black olive puree, or tapenade, is a must at all cocktails. Prepare and sample some jars in an old 18th-century oil mill in the heart of the land of Grasse.