Vence – Matisse's chapel and a cathedral city in the hills

Vence lies in the hills behind Nice, below the limestone cliffs of the baous that give the landscape its rugged profile. The old town is a tight oval of medieval streets inside its ramparts, and around it a modern town of villas spreads down the slopes. Painters and writers have loved it for a century: D. H. Lawrence, Marc Chagall and Jean Dubuffet all lived here, and Henri Matisse moved to the villa Le Rêve in 1943.

Neighbouring Saint-Paul-de-Vence gets the crowds. Vence, larger and more lived-in, rewards those who come.

Bishops, lords and a king's tree

Vence became the seat of a Roman civitas, and Roman inscriptions found beneath the town are now built into the walls of its cathedral, said by tradition to stand on the site of a temple of Mars. In 1230 Romée de Villeneuve took the town for the Count of Provence, and in 1231 he built the ramparts. From then until the Revolution, the Villeneuve family and the bishops shared the lordship.

The bishops of Vence included a future pope, Paul III, two members of the Académie française, among them Antoine Godeau, and three saints. According to a popular story, François I visited in 1538, at the time of the peace of Nice, and gave the townspeople an ash tree, which still stands on the Place du Frêne.

Walking the old town

Enter beside the Château de Villeneuve, now the Fondation Émile-Hugues art centre, on the Place du Frêne. A few steps on, the Place du Peyra, the town's forum in the Middle Ages, has a fountain at its centre. Wind through the lanes to the Place Godeau and the cathedral of the Nativité-de-Notre-Dame, from the 12th century, with its gallery organ. Nearby, the Roman columns known as the Colonnes des Marseillais stand on the Place du Grand-Jardin.

The Chapelle du Rosaire

In 1941 Matisse underwent cancer surgery in Nice and was nursed by a young woman, Monique Bourgeois, who also posed for him. In 1943 she entered the Dominican convent in Vence as Sister Jacques-Marie, and later asked him to help design a chapel. He agreed, and from 1947, at 77, he spent more than four years on every detail: the architecture, the stained glass, the murals and ceramics, the furnishings and even the priests' vestments. The first stone was laid on 11 December 1949, and the chapel was consecrated on 25 June 1951.

Inside, the space is small, 15 metres by 6, white and L-shaped, with the altar where the two arms meet. The stained glass uses just three colours: yellow for the sun, green for vegetation and cactus forms, and blue for the sea, the sky and the Madonna. The light they throw is the chapel's real decoration. On the walls, three murals in black line on white tile show Saint Dominic, the Virgin offering her child to the world, and all fourteen Stations of the Cross in a single composition. Matisse, confined to a wheelchair, drew them with a brush tied to a long stick.

Neighbourhood and property data for Vence and Tourrettes-sur-Loup is on VERA PI, and more art trails are on metromode.co.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.