Things to do in Beaulieu-sur-Mer — by people who live on its quay.

Morning: the market, then the villa

Start at the covered market off the Place Marinoni — small, real, and stocked by the hills behind town: cheeses, olives, socca if you are lucky, and the peaches that make the boat’s fruit bowl famous. Coffee happens on the square under the plane trees, where the town’s entire social life is conducted before ten.

Then the Villa Kérylos, on its own point past the Baie des Fourmis: a millionaire-archaeologist’s full-scale reconstruction of an ancient Greek villa, built 1902–1908 and quite unlike anything else on the coast. Mosaics, bronzes, a courtyard open to the sea — give it ninety minutes. It has a page of its own in this journal, because it earns one.

Afternoon: the water, obviously

The town has two beaches — the Baie des Fourmis’ palm-lined curve under the casino gardens, and the Petite Afrique under its cliff of palms, named a century ago for the vegetation and still the warmer, greener of the two. Both are clean, calm and family-friendly; both are covered properly in our beaches guide.

Or do what you suspect we will say: get on the water. The port is the town’s front door, Cap Ferrat is directly opposite, and a chartered afternoon reaches coves no beach towel ever will. The coastal path around the Cap — an hour’s flat, beautiful walk to Saint-Jean — is the landbound consolation prize, and a good one.

Evening: aperitif hour, done correctly

The African Queen on the port is the institution — pizzas, people-watching, boats backing in a metre from your table — and the terraces of the Place Marinoni carry the quieter end of the evening. If the occasion is grand, La Réserve’s waterside dining room has been the coast’s special-occasion answer since 1880. Then the seafront walk back, lit gold, past the Kérylos to the bay. Small town. Complete evening.