Valbonne and Place des Arcades – a square to slow down at

While the Riviera's hill villages wind their way around their hills, Valbonne is drawn with a ruler. The monks from Lérins founded the village in 1519 as a grid around an arcaded square – and that square is still one of the inland's best places to let an afternoon slip by.

It's ten o'clock on a weekday morning in Valbonne. Beneath the arcades around the square, the cafés are setting out their tables, a man reads the newspaper at one of the first, and the sun has not yet reached over the pastel-coloured façades. Nothing is happening, and that is precisely the point. Valbonne lies twenty minutes from the coast, in a valley halfway along the river Brague, and anyone arriving here after Cannes or Antibes notices the difference at once: here the pace is different.

The name means "the good valley", Vallis Bona in Latin. The municipality today comprises both the old village in the north-west and a large part of the Sophia Antipolis technology park in the east, but the two worlds barely touch each other. Facts about the municipality can be found on VERA PI's page about Valbonne.

A monastery in the good valley

The valley was deserted when the Bishop of Antibes, in 1199, gave the land to the monastery of Prads, which founded the monastery of Sainte-Marie here. The monks belonged to the Order of Chalais, a small order from Dauphiné and Provence with rules close to those of the Cistercians. The order was poor and fell apart, and after disputes between monasteries and bishops, the Pope, in 1335, granted Valbonne to the monastery of Lérins, the island off Cannes.

Then came war, drought and the Black Death in 1351. The inhabitants of the surrounding villages fled, and the monastery's lands lay "ruined, uninhabited, uncultivated, stony and covered by forest", as the French sources put it.

A village drawn with a ruler

When Provence had become French, the region began to recover. In 1519, the village we see today was founded, on the initiative of Augustin de Grimaldi, Bishop of Grasse and Abbot of Lérins, and the monk Dom Antoine Taxil, Prior of Valbonne. The purpose was economic: to have the monastery's lands cultivated again. Local investors received plots of land, and craftsmen from Italy came to work with the clay from the nearby villages of Vallauris and Biot.

The village was laid out as a grid, inspired by Roman military camps. Five streets run from north to south and ten from east to west, all roughly four metres wide, and they intersect at right angles. Seen from above, Valbonne is a chessboard — unusual among the perched and winding villages in the area. The same rigour characterised the houses, which were originally tall, narrow and almost identical.

Place des Arcades – the village's living room

In the middle of the grid lies Place des Arcades, built in the early 1600s. The square is surrounded by arcades where cafés and restaurants have their tables, with house façades in pink, yellow and ochre above. It has been protected as a historic monument since 1992.

This is where Valbonne lives. In the mornings it's coffee and newspapers, at midday long lunches, and in the evenings the arcades fill with locals and families. Take a table and stay – it's not a place you tick off, but a place you sit in.

The Saint-Blaise monastery and church

In the southern part of the village lies what remains of the medieval monastery. The Romanesque monastery church from the 1200s became the parish church of Saint-Blaise when the village was built, and it is considered one of the best examples of Chalaisian art, closely related to early Cistercian. The bell tower was added in the 1800s.

The monastery buildings are well preserved and have been restored since 1970. Today they house the local heritage museum Le Vieux Valbonne, with objects and tools from the village's farming life and an exhibition about the Order of Chalais. The church and monastery have been classified as a historic monument since 1984. The village is also home to the Chapelle Saint-Bernardin, dating from the 16th century.

The village festivals and modern Valbonne

Two traditional festivals define the year: Saint-Blaise at the end of January or beginning of February, and Saint-Roch in mid-August. At the same time, Valbonne has changed fundamentally since the 1970s, when Sophia Antipolis was built on a large part of the Valbonne forest. The population grew from around 3,000 inhabitants in 1980 to almost 15,000 in 2013 – but the old village remains the same.

From Valbonne, it is close to Mougins and down to Antibes. You can find more destinations at metromode.co and in our guide to Monaco.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.