Nice, from shore to sea
Through the exhibition “Nice, from shore to sea"The Masséna Museum explores the relationships that Nice has maintained throughout its history with the Mediterranean. From prehistory to today, from the Nika of the Greeks to the winter resort of Queen Victoria, the city has constantly reinvented its relationship with the shoreline. Sometimes, by fearing threats, it turned away and protected. Often, she made it the horizon of her boldness and dreams.
Today, while the United Nations Conference on the Ocean stands in its walls, Nice is also questioning its responsibility for this natural environment, both fragile and threatened.
We are thus reminded of the wish of Paul Valéry, at the time of the creation, in 1933, on the Promenade des Anglais, of the Mediterranean University Centre:
“ It is to be desired, (...) that our Centre manifests itself and imposes itself, some day, as the place for the development of a Mediterranean knowledge, the point where an increasingly clear and complete consciousness of the function of this privileged sea is formed in the development of the ideals and resources of man"
Paul Valéry
These relationships will be discussed from several approaches that translate into a 7-step room path:
- The Mediterranean: origins to the myth
- Migration of Eastern Religions in West, Saints Travelers
- The dreaded sea
- Late creation of a port, trade and fishing
- The sea as an object of study
- The invention of the shore, walks and baths
- The concern for the protection of shore and sea