Rauba Capeù War Memorial

In front of you, set into the rock face of Castle Hill, is the monument with which Nice honoured its dead of the First World War. The site was not chosen at random: it was an old quarry cut into the cliff, between the harbour and the Old Town.

1An urn in the rock

The architect Roger Séassal, a Prix de Rome winner, won the competition for the memorial. The foundation stone was laid on 11 November 1924, and the inauguration, at the end of January 1928, was attended by Marshal Foch. It stands some thirty-two metres high. At its centre, beneath a great arch, rises a monumental urn, surrounded by plaques bearing the names of more than three and a half thousand fallen Niçois.

On either side, the sculptor Alfred Janniot carved two large high reliefs: war on the left, peace on the right. Five steps lead up to the urn, one for each year of the conflict, from 1914 to 1918.

Every name carved here belongs to a Niçois who never came home from the front: a huge loss for a city that, barely half a century earlier, had still belonged to the Kingdom of Sardinia.

2The hat-stealing cape

The spot is called Rauba Capeù, Nissart for «hat stealer»: the wind blows so hard around this point that, as locals like to say, it snatches the hats off passers-by. The memorial has been a listed historic monument since 2011.

3What to look for

• Janniot's reliefs: war on the left, peace on the right.
• The five steps leading up to the urn.
• The carved rock of the old quarry framing the whole monument.