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How Cannes was
founded

Cannes reflections

Croisette and port

I left you on the quay facing the square allées de la Liberté. Notice just at you right the concrete bunker of the Palais des Festivals. This new building really spoils the landscape.... What about that Palais des Festivals that you noticed I don't like very much? In Cannes they call it the "Bunker" and they try to hide it a little behind some greenery. The uninspiring building was inaugurated in 1982 following the design of the British architect Sir Hubert Bennet.  It is a real concrete vessel, but granted with the most perfectioned equipment to receive the congressmen and of course, the film projections of the festival.
The architecturally much more interesting building and especially built for the festival in 1947 old “Palais “ was torn down despite a huge and general protest. I suppose big money had a hand here (again!) This old Palais was where the new Noga Hilton is now, with a casino (aha!!) and enormous car parking. That’s the Cannes of today, where we look for some comfort on a terrace under the palms of the Croisette, sipping on a glass of white wine, looking at the phenomenons passing by.
But let’s wake up and continue where we stopped. On the allées de la Liberté there is a " brocante" (collectibles) market every Saturday, In front of you see town hall and the central bus station. For the nostalgic of American food culture, Planet-Terminator-Hollywood attracts huge crowds who are happy to taste something different from all that too refined and tasty French cuisine :-) (I hope I didn't offend anyone)
The last vestiges of the fishing village of pre-Victorian days can be seen from the quai Saint-Jacques, and in a little lane no wider than an ox cart only a minute’s walk away you can still find “coquillages” spilling from the fishmonger’s open air displays.
You want to shop? Just walk all over the endless rue d'Antibes, the shopping street of Cannes who holds, I quote the GDR, (quote) the record of France of boutiques and shops per inhabitant. Fashion and shoe shops, you cannot count them! Some fanatics even compare the rue d'Antibes to the Faubourg St.Honore in Paris, which is quite a bit exaggerated, except for the prices !....(unquote) could ask the senseless question what all these spoiled 19th century wealthy and chic people would have said about the Cannes of today?
I prefer you head straight for the rue Meynadier, much more authentic, where time has not changed these salty scents, nor can it the smell of chickens roasting in a coating of Provencal herbs that wafts down the lane. It used to be the main street of Cannes in older times. It is always a boisterous pedestrian thoroughfare, where the “Tout Cannes” shops for the best home made pasta, the freshest cheese (Ferme Savoyarde), and the most mouth-watering delicacies its master “traiteurs” can produce. Buy a rye bread of Jacky Carletto and the fresh pasta at la Maison du Ravioli or Aux Bons Ravioli.
Just nearby, the place where all the Cannes restaurants go to buy the fish, still wriggling in the display stalls: le Marché Forville. Smallholders of the back country bring their produce to market proudly marked with the name of the village of origin instead of some new-fangled notion of a “sell by “ date. A festival of colours and odours. Nobody has to ask. It is always dew-fresh. Their clamorous cries and good-natured banter fill a pitch half the size of soccer field with their typical Provencal accents. This festival predates the film festival by 100 years. Long before the stars lived in Beverly Hills its French twin’s roots were firmly established in the dark red earth of the Midi. Here they run a continuous performance—a free spectacle for the eyes, ears and nose.  

Bibliography:

John Pemble, "the Mediterranean Passion, Victorians and Edwardians in the South", (Oxford University Press 1988), Mary Blume, "Cote d'Azur. Inventing the French Riviera" (Thames and Hudson, London 1982), The Twenties, From Notebooks and Diaries of the Period, by Edmund Wilson (Cannes 1921)-“ Cannes”, by R. Bailey (Pinguin pocket)-“ Eine Cannes Spaziergang”, by Th.Wolfers (ed. Spinne 1995)  

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Some black
ideas and
the lively rue Meynadier

Film Festival

Cannes today