Rent a Car in Nice

Nice itself — the Promenade des Anglais, the old town's ochre streets, the Castle Hill viewpoint — is compact and walkable, and the tram covers the rest comfortably. A car adds little inside the city and parking is expensive and scarce near the seafront. The reason to hire a car in Nice is the rest of the Côte d'Azur: Monaco is about 20 minutes east, Cannes is 30 minutes west, and the perched villages of Èze, Saint-Paul-de-Vence and Gourdon are all within an hour, connected by some of the most scenic coastal roads in Europe — the three Corniches above Monaco chief among them.

Further afield, Antibes and its old town are a short drive south-west, and the Italian border and San Remo are under an hour east, making a day trip across into Liguria realistic. Inland, the Gorges du Loup and the perfume town of Grasse reward a slower half-day away from the coast. None of these connect well by train or bus if you want to combine more than one stop, so most visitors renting for the Riviera do it for the hill villages and the coast road, not for getting around Nice itself.