This Villefranche day trip includes a private van and driver-guide. When you meet your driver, you discuss your interests together and plan the stops accordingly. With 6 hours, it is realistic to plan for 2 or 3 towns, or even just one if you would rather spend the day at a leisurely pace with time for lunch or the beach.
Popular 6-hour combinations include:
Monaco, Monte Carlo and Eze
Monaco, Monte Carlo and Nice
Saint Paul de Vence, Antibes and Nice
Saint Paul de Vence and Eze
Saint Paul de Vence with Cannes and Antibes or Nice.
Coastal Highlights.
Monaco (about 40 minutes from Villefranche) sits on a rock outcrop that made for a natural fortress, home to the Royal Palace, a Cathedral where Princess Grace is buried, and, at 2.02 square kilometers, the world's second smallest country after Vatican City.
Monte Carlo (about 40 minutes from Villefranche) puts you on the streets of the Formula 1 Grand Prix circuit, with the Casino as a favorite photo stop.
Nice (about 10 minutes from Villefranche) offers the Old Town's Cours Saleya flower market, a tradition dating to 1861 that grew into the world's first wholesale flower market by 1897, plus the Promenade des Anglais along the Riviera's most famous beach. Cannes (about 1 hour from Villefranche) means a walk down La Croisette past the Grandes Dames hotels and the red carpeted Palais des Festivals.
Hilltop & Inland Highlights.
Eze (about 25 minutes from Villefranche) is a pedestrian only medieval village clinging to the cliffs 1,000 feet above the sea, connected to the coast by the Chemin de Nietzsche, a trail that predates the 19th century philosopher but takes his name from the walks he took here in 1883 and 1884 while working on part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
Saint Paul de Vence (about 45 minutes from Villefranche) is a walled hilltop art village and home to La Colombe d'Or, the inn where artists including Picasso, Matisse, Miro and Chagall are said to have traded paintings for their stay starting in the 1920s and 1930s.
Grasse (about 1.5 hours from Villefranche), recognized by UNESCO in 2018 for the traditional know-how behind its perfume industry, is home to the Fragonard Perfume Factory, which offers free tours in English. Gourdon (about 1 hour from Villefranche) is a perched village at roughly 2,100 feet elevation, its hilltop castle now home to a small museum of naive art alongside gardens laid out by Andre Le Notre, the landscape architect behind the gardens of Versailles.
Mougins (about 45 minutes from Villefranche) has kept its medieval spiral street plan, built up around a 1056 gift of land to monks from the Iles de Lerins, and today mixes that history with a photography museum and a reputation for fine dining. Tourrettes-sur-Loup (about 55 minutes from Villefranche) is known for its forests, waterfalls and the Florian candy factory, where a free tour shows how local flowers become candy and jam.
Coastal Neighbors.
Antibes (about 50 minutes from Villefranche) traces back to Antipolis, a Greek trading settlement founded around the 6th century BC, later fortified with the star-shaped ramparts built under the military engineer Vauban in the 17th century; today it is also home to the Picasso Museum inside the Chateau Grimaldi.
Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat (about 15 minutes from Villefranche) is one of the Riviera's most exclusive peninsulas, home to the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild and the Villa Kerylos.
Villefranche-sur-Mer itself, within walking distance of the port, is worth a closer look before or after your tour. Its bay is one of the deepest natural harbors in the Mediterranean, once serving as home port for the US Sixth Fleet from 1948 to 1966, and the small Chapelle Saint-Pierre on the waterfront was decorated inside and out by the artist and filmmaker Jean Cocteau in 1956 and 1957.
Your driver may also make recommendations based on your interests, but with a flexible itinerary we cannot guarantee every stop you have in mind. Traffic and weather affect driving time to each destination.
Review Location- Villefranche 
