A DISTRICT OF Nice
Coulée verte
A bus station, a car park and hanging gardens, replaced by twenty hectares of park above a buried river.
The Paillon crosses Nice, but it cannot be seen: it has been covered since the late nineteenth century. On that slab there grew, in turn, a bus station, a car park and hanging gardens — then, from 2010, their demolition. The Promenade du Paillon opened on 26 October 2013.
The park was designed by the landscape architect Michel Péna. Twelve hectares at opening, taken to twenty by a second phase in 2025, planted with sixteen hundred trees, six thousand shrubs and fifty thousand perennials. It links Place Masséna to the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in one continuous stretch, without crossing a road.
What that changes for a flat overlooking it is simple and lasting: the view is onto a public park, and a public park does not get built on. In a dense city centre, it is the only form of openness that does not depend on a neighbouring developer's goodwill. Floor level matters more here than elsewhere, and so does aspect — the buildings along the park face south or north depending on the bank.
The trade-off is that of any successful park: it is busy. Water mirror, playgrounds, events — the activity is constant in fine weather and runs late. This is a city-centre address, not a retreat, and that is checked on a summer evening rather than a March morning.
