EmoriaCustom art prints and star maps
Maps · Collection 01

Nice poster, drawn from the real map

43.7009°N / 7.2684°E · France

The curve of the bay holds the whole drawing, and the river now reads only in the negative. The shore describes the Baie des Anges in an even arc that the Promenade des Anglais follows for seven kilometres, until it meets the rock of the Colline du Château.

You choose the framing, the palette and the words of the caption. The work is drawn from real data, then printed to order in the workshop closest to you.

Compose my Nice poster
What the map shows

An arc of coast, and a river turned into a garden

Between Vieux-Nice and the nineteenth-century town runs the Paillon, at right angles to the sea, but covered over: it reads only in the negative, through the green band of the Promenade du Paillon and the notch of Place Masséna. Do not look for it as a watercourse, it is no longer one along its urban stretch, and that is exactly what makes this map interesting.

Read on

On either side of that void, two opposed weaves: to the east the long strips of Vieux-Nice, between the foot of the rock and the church of Sainte-Réparate, whose old fabric is of Italian tradition, the city having joined France only in 1860; to the west the regular streets of the nineteenth-century town. Behind, the buildings climb in an amphitheatre onto the hills of Cimiez and Les Baumettes. And at the far end of the arc, the airport lays an artificial rectangle over the alluvium of the Var delta: the coast you see to the west is not the natural coast. That Var is a river, not to be confused with the neighbouring department, since Nice is in the Alpes-Maritimes.

Compose your own

What suits Nice

The palette

A warm, luminous ground in light values, with a single clear cool mass for the bay. The façades of Vieux-Nice are ochre and blood red, the rock of the Château is a pale limestone, and the hinterland is mineral rather than wooded. The point to watch is the contrast between land and sea: the sea takes up a third of the image and has to stay a calm field, or it crushes the arc of the Promenade. The green band of the Paillon is the one place a note of vegetation is justified, and it should read as a line, not as a park.

The framing

The city develops along an arc, and the frame has to hold the two ends that date it: the mouth of the Var with the rectangle of the airport to the west, Port Lympia and the foot of Mont Boron to the east. Between them, the curve of the Promenade has to stay in one piece, unbroken. To the north, go far enough up that the trace of the Paillon reads from the hills down to the sea, or the covered river is no more than a green patch with no origin. That is why the opening frame steps back a notch rather than tightening. Landscape will give you the arc larger.

The caption

The title, a line beneath it, the coordinates. The name of a square, a date, the name of a hill: that line is what turns a plan of Nice into your plan of Nice.

The sheet
Subject
Nice, France
Palette
Calcaire et baie
Map style
Clean and Detailed
Layout
Frame
Typeface
Dedication
Framing
Zoom 12.0
Fade at the edges
25%
Format
Portrait
The palette of this poster

Calcaire et baie

Sixteen inks, in the configurator’s order. It is not in the catalogue, but you will find it in the palette library, filed under its material.

  • Background
  • Water
  • Greenery
  • Built-up areas
  • Roads
  • Buildings
  • Text
  • Motorways
  • Main roads
  • Secondary roads
  • Minor roads
  • Streets
  • Service roads
  • Paths
  • Railways
  • Borders
Compose with this paletteStart from it to make your own

Opens the colour workshop with these 16 inks in place: change one, keep the rest.

It will wait in your account, ready for any piece.

What the drawing tells

Three facts you can see on the plan

1706A rock that explains all the rest

The Colline du Château is a limestone rock a little over ninety metres high, which carried a stronghold from the eleventh to the eighteenth century, besieged again and again. Taken by French troops in 1705, it was razed in 1706 by order of Louis XIV, and its ground is now a park. On the map, this rock explains everything: it is what stops the seafront and pushes the harbour behind it.

1856Seven kilometres of a single curve

The Promenade des Anglais runs from the left bank of the Var in the west to the Quai des États-Unis. Born around 1822 from a simple path laid out by the wintering British colony, it took the form of a road between 1844 and 1856 and carried its present name from the 1850s. It is what gives the map its continuous curved line, without which the bay would not read at all.

2013The river became a garden

The Paillon was covered over in successive stages and vanished from the plan. On its covered bed a bus station and a car park were built in 1973, then the MAMAC in 1990 and the Tête Carrée in 2002. Michel Péna’s green corridor, inaugurated on 26 October 2013, replaced the demolished bus station: one point two kilometres long, twelve hectares at first, taken to about twenty by the extension opened on 18 October 2025. The river has therefore become, literally, a garden.

Before ordering

The four questions people ask

Can I choose any place, any date?

Yes. The search covers the whole world, from a capital to a hamlet. For the Sky collection, any date works, past or future: the sky is calculated.

What sizes do you offer?

From 21 × 29.7 cm to 84.1 × 118.9 cm, that is A4 to A0, portrait or landscape depending on the material. Every size is shown with its price in the editor.

What materials do you offer?

Four, from the barest to the most dressed.

  • Matte fine art paperA 200 gsm art paper with a deep matte finish: the bare print, to frame as you please.
  • Wooden hangersThe print suspended between two wooden hangers, ready to hang, in the spirit of studio posters.
  • The classic frameThe print mounted under acrylic glass in a slim frame, assembled by hand, delivered ready to hang.
  • Framed canvasThe piece printed on canvas, stretched over a wooden stretcher bar and set in a frame: a gallery presence.
How long does it take?

Allow 1 to 4 working days for making, up to 7 for hand-assembled frames and canvases, then 1 to 6 working days in transit with standard delivery.

Digital editions are available immediately: the file of your piece is emailed to you as soon as you order.

All the questions

Your Nice

The end of the Promenade where you stopped, the lane in Vieux-Nice, the climb to Cimiez. The arc is the same for everyone. What you keep behind it is not.

Compose my Nice poster