BY TRAIN FROM CANNES STATION (5 minutes on foot from our apartments)
Name of departure train station: Cannes Gare SNCF
Name of destination train station: Antibes Gare SNCF
Length of the journey: approx. every 15 minutes
One way fare: 4 euros / Return fare: 8 euros
BY BUS FROM CANNES BUS STATION (5 minutes on foot from our apartments)
Name/Number of bus line: ligne 200 Cannes – Antibes -Nice
Name of departure bus station: Cannes Gare routière
Name of destination bus stop in Antibes: outward journey: stop
Dugommier (Place de Gaulle) / Return journey: stop Briand (Place de
Gaulle)
Frequency of the line: every 20/30 minutes
Length of the journey: approx. 30/40 minutes
One way fare: 1 euro / Return fare: 2 euros
Antibes Juan-les-Pins has a history dating back several millenia, and the exceptional site where the old city was founded was most probably already inhabited over 2000 years ago. Since then, Ligurians, Ionians, Phoenicians, Etruscans and other Oxybians frequented the place before the Greeks of Phocaea settled there in the 5th century BC to found a trading post.
Heaped with privileges by the Romans for having supported Cesar against Pompeius, the rich Antipolis was renamed Antiboul with the arrival of Christianity and in 442 that of Saint Hermentaire, the town’s first bishop. The dark years of the Middle Ages, which saw Barbarian hordes flood into Europe, failed to undermine the fierce determination of the people of Antibes, who clung unremittingly to their rock.
A pontifial and royal city, Antibes became a stronghold through her close proximity to Italy. Louis XIV entrusted her development to military architect Vauban, who made her rampart walls unassailable. No military campaign ever succeeded against the city, neither that of 1707 nor the siege of 1746 when Antibes put up heroic resistance against the fire fuelled by 2600 bombs and 200 Austrian firepots. The various national revolutions did not have too great an influence on the city, which then had only 5000 inhabitants.
At the very most, when Napoleon landed in Golfe-Juan upon his return from the island of Elba, Antibes regained her title of “Bonne Ville” (good town) as a reward for her faithfulness to Louis XVIII: this title had previously been annulled by the emperor. She gained her new coat of arms too.
Tout au plus, lors du débarquement de Napoléon à Golfe-Juan au retour de l’île d’Elbe, récupéra-t-elle, en récompense de sa fidélité à Louis XVIII, son titre de ” Bonne Ville ” que lui avait enlevé l’empereur. Elle y gagna en outre ses nouvelles armoiries.
New times came, heralding the start of a fabulous expansion.
The unification of the county of Nice with France and the creation of the Alpes-Maritimes region, the demolition of a part of her rampart walls which had until then prevented the city from evolving, the advent of the brand new seaside resort in Juan-les-Pins, the great technological changes such as the train, the car as well as the extravagant tourist boom of the Côte d’Azur, all these developments were to propel the antique Antipolis into the dawn of the third millennium, where we find her today.
