The Palms of the 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.