What is the oldest tree in Nice?

The olive trees of the Cimiez monastery garden, some individually estimated at more than 400 years old, growing in a garden whose layout has been unchanged since Franciscan monks settled there in 1546. No single tree has its own separately measured age.

Where is Henri Matisse buried in Nice?

On land adjoining the Cimetière du Monastère de Cimiez, under an old olive tree, a short walk from the Musée Matisse. The grave is simple and freely visitable alongside the cemetery.

Are Nice's remarkable trees free to see?

Almost all of them. Eight of the ten stand in free public parks, gardens or streets. Château de Crémat, a working vineyard estate, charges for guided tours, and the Cimiez olive grove and monastery garden are free year-round.

Why does Nice have so many palm trees?

A deliberate 19th century choice. Palms went into the ground along the Promenade des Anglais from 1862 as fast-growing shade trees, and Parc Vigier is credited with acclimatising the Canary Island date palm in France for the first time in 1864, a species that then spread along the whole Côte d'Azur.

France

Ancient Trees in Nice

Nice's oldest trees are almost all olives, and almost all of them stand on one hill. Cimiez, the Roman-era district above the old town, has been continuously gardened since Franciscan monks arrived in 1546, and centuries of careful tending left a grove of olive trees now reckoned in the hundreds of years old, one of them shading Henri Matisse's own grave. Everywhere else in the city, the story is younger and more deliberate: a public garden planted in 1851, a promenade lined with palms from 1862, a forest replanted by hand the same decade after the hillside above it was stripped bare. Nice grew its green spaces on purpose, mostly within living memory of photography.

Photo: Édouard Hue, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

The Olive Grove of the Cimiez Monastery Garden

Olive (Olea europaea) · undated, some individually estimated over 400 years · Cimiez

Franciscan monks reached this hilltop above Nice in 1546 and laid out a grid-patterned vegetable and orchard garden following the monastic planting rules of Albert the Great, a layout that, unusually, has not changed since. What grows there today, thousands of olive trees spread across the monastery garden and the adjoining Jardin des Arènes, includes specimens local sources place at more than four hundred years old, though no individual tree has ever had its own age separately measured or recorded, so the figure describes the grove rather than one named tree. The garden sits directly beside the ruins of a first century Roman amphitheatre, meaning visitors can stand among trees planted under the Ancien Régime while looking at stonework that predates them by a millennium and a half. Entry has always been free, and the grove today is as much a public living room as a historic garden: people picnic, paint and do yoga under trees that were already old when the Franciscans who planted their ancestors were still tending the hill.

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Matisse's Olive Tree

Olive (Olea europaea) · undated, described as old · Cimiez

Henri Matisse spent the last years of his life a short walk from this hill and asked to be buried on it, under a tree rather than inside a mausoleum. He was laid to rest in 1954 on land adjoining the Cimetière du Monastère de Cimiez, the formal cemetery where painter Raoul Dufy and Nobel laureate Roger Martin du Gard are also buried, but on ground that had been part of his own property, beneath an olive tree that visitors consistently describe as old rather than newly planted for the occasion. No source gives the tree an individual age, so any figure here is a rough estimate rather than a documented fact, but its presence fits the wider Cimiez hillside, where centuries-old olives are the norm rather than the exception. The grave itself is famously plain, a pale stone slab for Matisse and his wife, a deliberate contrast to the ornate 19th and early 20th century monuments filling the cemetery just beside it. It remains freely visitable, reached on the same path as the cemetery and the Musée Matisse a few minutes further on.

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The Founding Trees of Jardin Albert 1er

Mixed species (19th-century public garden) · undated, garden planted from 1851-52 · Promenade des Anglais

This garden began as a swamp with a name that admitted it: Prato de la Fous, roughly the meadow of the mad, marshy ground at the mouth of the Paillon river that nobody had found a use for. A drainage and landscaping project started in 1829 gave the site its first real shape, and in 1851 the city drew up a specific planting list, 70 horse chestnuts, 60 elms, 40 lindens, 30 acacias and 24 mimosas among them, before levelling and planting the ground in 1852. The garden has changed names as often as it has changed fashion since, Jardin Paradis, Jardin des Plantes, Jardin des Palmiers, before settling on its current name in 1914 in tribute to the Belgian king's resistance to Germany. Ten plane trees stand among the garden's mix today, alongside descendants of that original 1851 species list, though no individual tree here carries its own measured age, so any figure is an estimate based on the garden's founding rather than a documented record. It remains one of Nice's oldest continuously maintained public gardens, a short walk from where the Paillon once flowed uncovered.

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The Olive and Pine Grove of Colline du Château

Mixed species (Mediterranean hillside park) · undated, park created from 1822 · Colline du Château

For most of Nice's history this hill was a fortress rather than a garden. A citadel stood here from the 11th century, guarding the bay, until the troops of Louis XIV demolished it in 1706 rather than let it fall back into Savoyard hands. The ruins sat mostly untouched for over a century before the city began turning the hilltop into a public park in 1822, planting stone pines, olives, carob trees, cypresses, evergreen oaks, hackberries and mastic trees across what is now a 19.3 hectare Mediterranean garden with more than three kilometres of paths. Centuries-old olive trees are among the oldest individual specimens now growing there, alongside stands of Aleppo pine, though no source gives any single tree in the park a documented age, so any figure is an estimate from the park's own founding date rather than a measured record. The climb rewards itself regardless of the trees: the summit is the highest point in central Nice, with the bay, the old town and the Paillon valley all visible from the same viewpoint the citadel's own defenders once used.

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Photo: Tubantia, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0 / GFDL)

The Cypresses of the Cimetière du Château

Mediterranean Cypress (Cupressus sempervirens) · undated, cemetery reorganised after 1860 · Colline du Château

This cemetery exists because the King of Sardinia decided in 1783 that burying the dead inside church chapels was a public health risk, and ordered the practice stopped across his kingdom, which then included Nice. The city chose the ruined citadel grounds on the hill above the old town, terracing the site into the stepped, orderly plots still visible today. When Nice was annexed by France in 1860, the cemetery was enlarged and reorganised, work that involved cutting back or replanting the site's cypress cover along with new paths and retaining walls, so most of the cypresses standing today likely date from that period rather than the cemetery's 1783 founding, though no individual tree has a documented planting record. What survives is a genuinely striking setting: 2,800 graves on terraces overlooking the bay and the port, shaded by cypress trees that give the whole hillside its dark, vertical silhouette from the sea. The cemetery remains free and open to visitors alongside the surrounding Colline du Château park.

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The Palms of the Promenade des Anglais

Mixed species (19th-century seafront planting) · undated, planted from 1862 · Promenade des Anglais

The promenade that gave Nice its postcard image was planted for practical reasons before it became a symbol. By February 1862, city planners were already putting palms, evergreen oaks, carob trees and maritime pines into the ground along the seafront, a revision of an earlier plan that had called only for oaks or pines spaced ten metres apart; officials added the faster-growing palms and shrubs specifically because pedestrians needed shade sooner than slow-growing oaks could provide it. By 1868 a further row of larger palms had gone in along the promenade's northern side, and palm plantings spread rapidly through Nice's public and private gardens between 1867 and 1878, a fashion the city is still identified with today. No individual palm from that original planting is documented as still standing, and Nice's palms since have faced repeated disease pressure, so any specific tree's age here is an estimate rather than a verified record tied to a named specimen. The promenade itself, though widened and rebuilt many times since, still runs the same shoreline these first plantings were meant to shade.

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The Washingtonia Palms of Villa Masséna

California Fan Palm (Washingtonia filifera) · undated, garden opened to the public in 1921 · Promenade des Anglais

A Belle Époque prince's winter garden became one of Nice's most formal public spaces almost by accident of inheritance. Prince Victor d'Essling, descendant of Napoleon's Marshal Masséna, had his seafront villa built from 1898 in a neoclassical style modelled on the Villa Rothschild in Cannes, with a garden laid out by the noted French landscape architect Édouard André. When Victor's son ceded the property to the city in 1919, he attached one condition: a museum inside, and the garden opened to the public outside. That happened in 1921, and André's design, structured around three formal flowerbeds on its eastern side with Washingtonia filifera palms rising at each corner, has since been restored to match his original plan after later alterations blurred it. No individual palm here carries a documented planting date, so any age given is an estimate tied to the garden's known 1898-1921 development window rather than a measured record, but the specimens are substantial enough to frame the formal garden exactly as André intended over a century ago.

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The First Canary Island Date Palm of France

Canary Island Date Palm (Phoenix canariensis) · planted 1864 · Nice Port

Every Phoenix canariensis lining a promenade or a hotel driveway anywhere in France arguably traces back to one estate on Nice's eastern port. Baron Georges Vigier bought a Venetian-style villa here in 1863 and hired Jean-Pierre Barillet-Deschamps, the head gardener of Paris's own parks department, to landscape 30,000 square metres of grounds with tropical plants, tree ferns, bamboo, orange and olive groves and vineyards. In 1864, according to the garden's own preservation society, Vigier acclimatised the Canary Island date palm here for the first time in France, a claim resting on a single detailed source rather than independent corroboration, though the species did subsequently spread through Riviera gardens over the following decades in exactly the pattern that origin story implies. Vigier went on to breed a hybrid palm of his own, named the Vigieris after him. The estate itself shrank drastically after his era, down to a single hectare when the modern Parc Vigier opened to the public in 1971, but palms including rare Livistona australis specimens still stand among its collection today.

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The Aleppo Pine Forest of Mont Boron

Aleppo Pine (Pinus halepensis) · undated, reforestation began 1862 · Mont Boron

This entire forest exists because a 19th century engineer refused to give up on bare rock. When Nice became French in 1860, the summit of Mont Boron was heathland, stripped of tree cover by centuries of grazing and cutting. Forester Prosper Demontzey, who later became one of France's most influential figures in mountain reforestation, took on the hillside in 1862 and tried sowing Aleppo pine seed directly into the exposed ground first. It failed repeatedly. What worked was planting young pines into deep, prepared holes instead, a labour-intensive method that eventually caught, and the pine cover that established itself went on to shelter the return of olive and carob trees beneath it as the canopy matured. The forest today covers 57 hectares with eleven kilometres of marked trails, wrapping around the villas that Second Empire figures like Baron Haussmann built on the hill once it was fashionable and shaded again. No individual tree from Demontzey's original planting is identified as still standing, so any age given describes the reforestation campaign rather than a specific measured pine.

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The Strawberry Tree of Château de Crémat

Strawberry Tree (Arbutus unedo) · undated · Saint-Antoine de Ginestière / Bellet

This tree grows on a wine estate whose owners kept rebuilding the same hillside into ever grander versions of itself. Antoine Mari bought the land on the hill of Crémat in 1906 and built a medieval-style château with a machicolated tower, part of the Bellet appellation that has grown grapes on Nice's inland hills since Roman times. Irène Bretz, a wealthy American who took over the estate in 1923, added neo-Tuscan flourishes and built out the surrounding gardens further, the setting in which this Arbutus unedo, listed with precise coordinates on the regional remarkable-trees registry for the Alpes-Maritimes, now stands. The species carries both flowers and red, strawberry-like fruit on its branches at the same time in autumn, an unusual trait for a Mediterranean evergreen, and no individual age is documented for this specimen beyond its listing as a notable specimen. The estate still produces organically farmed Bellet wine today and takes visitors on booked tours through its gardens, art collection and cellars, one of the few trees on this list that comes with a tasting afterward.

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Frequently asked

What is the oldest tree in Nice?: The olive trees of the Cimiez monastery garden, some individually estimated at more than 400 years old, growing in a garden whose layout has been unchanged since Franciscan monks settled there in 1546. No single tree has its own separately measured age.
Where is Henri Matisse buried in Nice?: On land adjoining the Cimetière du Monastère de Cimiez, under an old olive tree, a short walk from the Musée Matisse. The grave is simple and freely visitable alongside the cemetery.
Are Nice's remarkable trees free to see?: Almost all of them. Eight of the ten stand in free public parks, gardens or streets. Château de Crémat, a working vineyard estate, charges for guided tours, and the Cimiez olive grove and monastery garden are free year-round.
Why does Nice have so many palm trees?: A deliberate 19th century choice. Palms went into the ground along the Promenade des Anglais from 1862 as fast-growing shade trees, and Parc Vigier is credited with acclimatising the Canary Island date palm in France for the first time in 1864, a species that then spread along the whole Côte d'Azur.
More on the oldest tree: What is the oldest tree in Nice? The full answer, with map and directions.
More like this: Several of these trees also appear in Europe's 10 Most Remarkable Ancient Trees.
More cities: Ancient trees in Amsterdam · Ancient trees in Lisbon · Ancient trees in London · Ancient trees in Paris · Ancient trees in Rome · Ancient trees in Tokyo · Ancient trees in Istanbul · Ancient trees in Barcelona · Ancient trees in Kyoto · Ancient trees in Madrid · Ancient trees in New York · Ancient trees in Dublin · Ancient trees in Edinburgh · Ancient trees in Brussels · Ancient trees in Antwerp · Ancient trees in Vienna · Ancient trees in Prague · Ancient trees in Berlin · Ancient trees in Seville · Ancient trees in Porto · Ancient trees in Athens · Ancient trees in Florence · Ancient trees in Milan · Ancient trees in Venice · Ancient trees in Munich · Ancient trees in Lyon · Ancient trees in Valencia

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Walk 6 of these trees about 4.1 km, 55 min on foot