Love them or hate them, they are one of the landmarks of this coast, and they make an unmistakable meeting point for rides heading into the mountains.
The towns nearby have strong artistic and culinary connections. In Cagnes, Pierre-Auguste Renoir spent the last years of his life at Les Collettes, a house surrounded by olive trees, where he painted with brushes strapped to his arthritic hands; the house is now a museum. Above the modern town, Haut-de-Cagnes is a medieval hilltop village around a Grimaldi castle. Villeneuve-Loubet was the birthplace of Auguste Escoffier, the chef who codified modern French cuisine, and his family home is now a museum of culinary art.
The rides that start here head north into the Alps, to the Mercantour and the Col de Turini. Within half an hour, you can be climbing out of the coastal sprawl into a different world of gorges, perched villages and pine forests. The Var valley leads north towards the mountains, and roads branch off into narrow gorges like the Vésubie and the Tinée. The Col de Turini, at around 1,600 metres, is famous as a stage of the Monte Carlo Rally, with dozens of hairpins on each side, and the Mercantour roads climb even higher, to the Cime de la Bonette.
The coast itself is busy, with heavy traffic, especially in summer, and many roundabouts and traffic lights. Leave early, ideally at dawn, to avoid the worst of it. There are plenty of fuel stations, bakeries and cafés in the area, so you can stock up before heading into the mountains, where services are scarcer. In summer, the coast is hot and crowded; in spring and autumn, the light is clear and the mountain roads are quieter. Some high passes are closed by snow from late autumn to late spring.