Lessons from Menton on Wayfinding

Letter A marks the spot for Menton, France

You think of European cities as being especially pedestrian friendly.  And in many valuable ways they keep you safe, they keep you entertained and they supply just about everything you need in terms of sustenance.  Often winding steeply up and down hill, they keep you well-exercised.  But for visitors (and there are a lot of us) it can take a while to crack the way-finding code of the native.

There are two paths in each town:  the path of the tourist, and the path of the native.  The tourist path is usually well-signed and designed to keep you out of the way of people going along their business, the people who work there.  On the tourist path you find places that sell things tourists typically want to buy, which helps the town's economy.

It works well enough, and for 90% of tourists, this is the path to follow.  It is scenic and it gives you a condensed flavor of the town.

For me, as a "semi-tourist" doing research, I like a bit of the tourist path and a bit of the "real town".  Now he real town can be boring.  And lonely, with everyone needing to get somewhere in a hurry.  Except you.  The most boring place I've been to in Europe so far, is Monte Carlo, famous for its exciting James Bondesque atmosphere.  But there are a lot of people who work in the gambling capital of the world. They shop for groceries off the tourist path.  It's where their kids go to school and they visit relatives in the hospital and care homes.  It can be lively.  It can be indispensable.  But when you find yourself on the business side of Monte Carlo the sidewalks tend to be empty and there is nothing interesting to look at for blocks and blocks and blocks...

Menton, however, is not as highly touted as Monte Carlo, but to me it is perfect:  a lovely seaside town on the Riviera,  I am expecting Nice, only smaller.  A “poor man’s Nice,” as they say.  Nice is prepared for tourists, Menton isn't--at least in the offseason.  That is its chief appeal to me.

There is one problem, though:  Wayfinding for the first time visitor.  Menton Train Station spits you out into exactly the direction you don’t want to go—away from the water.  All this time you’ve been travelling with the sea just off your shoulder only to emerge into a vast parking lot facing a steep hillside.  There is a three storey wall immediately to your left, construction barriers in the driveway to your right with a “Victory” statue facing away from you.  Doesn’t seem promising.

The signs here are for the cars.  Pedestrians like me don’t belong.  If I did belong I’d know where to go.

And I have no map.  Where's the TI?  Is it in the train station?  No, but there is a book store.

I return to the shop inside the station and ask for a “carte de ville,” a “plan de ville,” the proprietress gently corrects, and hands several to me, “gratuit” with an encouraging smile.  I take it back outside and look for the train station,  and the orientation to the city with a map and its "vous et ici" with landmarks clearly marked and it simply. isn’t. there.

In the parking lot people aren’t giving any clues—they’re slipping away in no apparent direction or critical mass.  Going to work.  Bar Terminus stands seedily, forbiddingly, squarely, in front, in my way.  I thread around it, through a driveway and try to orient myself, something I will be doing continuously, for the next hour, on my map.

The solution:  Start with a cafe.  Study the map.

I decide to go to the right, which is a good thing, but it turns out heading to my right a second time, toward the water, is a bad thing.  I want to get to Menton Vieux, the old Menton, and it turns out I’m heading north where there are only hotels and lots of storm-tossed sea along the usual boring promenade.

Fine for the joggers, but I want to see some history and architecture here.  I want, I'm ashamed to admit, the tourist path.  But this is a good thing, that I have to work to find it, right?  The difference, and what makes it disorienting, is that the entrance to old Menton is at a sharp promontory. 

If you can't find the path, head for a landmark.

 When I turn around and start heading south, away from the large hotels, I find myself approaching a white concrete sculpture of a building, extremely modern, with its “feet” enveloping a glass box along the sides.  I’m back on the map and can see it’s the Cocteau Museum by architect Rudy Riccioti.  A landmark.  I’ll start my tour of Menton there.  Nice crosswalk and safety bollards by the way.

Photo courtesy of Designboom

Perfect.  I see another cafe.

I order an expensive Pellegrino, sitting in a corner looking out at the Belle Epoque Market Hall across the way.  I’ve stumbled into a rather glitzy tourist trap—exactly not how I think Cocteau would have wanted it.  As I look out the window I see the guys from the train the day before—the ones with the strange girl’s head pantomime street theatre show.  One is scrubbing off silver face paint as they cheerfully natter away.  It's nice to have this touchstone of familiarity and shared history, rare when one is travelling.

On the airport train from Nice

Between the Menton map and my little diagrammed walking card purchased in a boxed set of Provencal walks I try to figure out my next move.  The museum is disappointing, the market hall is closing up and it’s just gone 12 noon.  The walking card shows the market hall as the entry point and the museum as the final destination, but they look miles away on paper.  Yet here I've just discovered they are across the street from one another.  I give up on the map, which is making me crazy.  My intuition faultily told me the sea ran parallel to the town, but now I realize the sea has just turned at a right angle to the city--we're on a promontory, remember?

I reset my internal compass and decide to move upward, away from the sea...the opposite of what it seemed  like I was supposed to do upon arrival.  Things began making sense, starting with the trees.

 Just as puffballs offer some sort of mysterious reference point in the suburban code, I find pollarded trees to play a similar role in these towns along the French and Italian Riviera.  They are markers, and I've discovered them.

They lead me to...

More signs of life in a little square surrounded by restaurants and outdoor seating.  A man is playing the guitar, the paving pattern changes and there is sculpture.  Benches.  Away from the sterile boardwalk and museum, the closed market.  It's time for the town to reveal itself.    The town hall, the sweeping boulevard must be near.  And then I find the entrance to the vertical secret garden.  The Escalier de la Basilique St Michel Menton.  Follow me.  Up we go.

Suddenly I’m in another world.  

I chart my progress by looking back down to the beach at each landing.

The pavements are amazing, each stone handset in a variety of patterns, some nautical.  There are fountains, occasionally shop entrances.  There are niches and dreamy street names.

 It is all done in a way that makes it completely possible to believe that you aren't making any effort to gain elevation.

And yet you are.

 And before you know it you're at the top.

Clearly I've arrived

at St Michel de Menton.  St Michael, the Archangel vanquishing the devil in heaven and Prince of the Seraphim as well as advocate of the Jews and patron of grocers, mariners, paratroopers, police and sickness.

School is letting out and a bit further on I find myself scaling the heights of St. Michael’s cemetery, a necropolis high above the city.  The storm which had been splashing water up and over the promenade earlier is now in full cry.  I’m the only one here, except for another woman who flits in and out of my vision, very “Don’t Look Now”.

Not quite as I remember it from 1973, in this campily psychedelic trailer.

Click here for a wonderful 360-degree view of Menton from the escalier.

Now follow me as we descend a very different path--one the locals would take as opposed to the grand vistas of the escalier.  In places it seems carved right out of the living stone.

Gardens are carved out of balconies and crammed into pots wherever possible. 

 Children are on their way home from school.  Oranges grow everywhere there is space in this town, and an orchard fills the school yard.

As I thread my way through narrow stairways, I don't have a chance to check my bearings, but I trust my path leads me somewhere near the center.  Note the "trompe-l'oeil" window at the top right of this photo, above.  You're forced to slow down, safe in the knowledge that you're out of harm's way as a pedestrian who doesn't have to share the road with cars.  The risers are so low and the treads so deep that it's possible to bicycle, and even motorbike, as well as use a handcart as you make your way up and down.   In fact, in the off-season, masons and carpenters are a frequent site as they work on repairs.

Now the orange trees are back, at the Museum of Archaeology, and there is an enchanting house nearby:

With the name of "Villa Sans Nom".

Menton Museum of Archaeology

The orange trees have led me to the haunted Hotel Mondial

and the Hotel de Ville, where Cocteau painted the walls of the Mariage hall, open for a very brief time each day around closing time.  Lucky for me that was only 15 minutes away.

and back to the train station.