Juan-les-Pins

Juan-les-Pins
Health Resort and Spa

Evening view on the Mediterranean Sea from Juan-Les-Pins
Juan-les-Pins

Location within Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur

Coordinates: 43°34′16″N 7°06′34″E / 43.57111°N 7.10944°E / 43.57111; 7.10944Coordinates: 43°34′16″N 7°06′34″E / 43.57111°N 7.10944°E / 43.57111; 7.10944
Country  France
Region  Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
Department Alpes-Maritimes
Arrondissement Grasse
Canton Vallauris-Antibes-Ouest
Municipality Antibes
Elevation 10 m (30 ft)
Time zone CET (UTC+1)
Postal code 06600

Juan-les-Pins (French pronunciation: [ʒɥɑ̃ le pɛ̃]) is a town and a health resort and spa in the commune of Antibes, in the Alpes-Maritimes, in southeastern France, on the Côte d'Azur. It is situated between Nice and Cannes, 13 km from Nice Côte d'Azur Airport.

It is a major holiday destination popular with the international jet-set, with casino, nightclubs and beaches,[1] which are made of fine grained sand, and are not straight, but instead are cut with small inlets.

La Baigneuse by Alfonse Grebel on Ave. Guy de Maupassant

History

Situated west of the town of Antibes on the western slope of the ridge, halfway to the old fishery village of Golfe-Juan (where Napoleon landed in 1815), it had been an area with many stone pine trees (pins in French), where the inhabitants of Antibes used to go for a promenade, for a picnic in the shadow of the stone pine trees or to collect tree branches and cones for their stoves.

The village was given the name Juan-les-Pins on 12 March 1882. The spelling Juan, used instead of the customary French spelling, Jean, derives from the local Occitan dialect. Other names discussed for the town include Héliopolis, Antibes-les-Pins and Albany-les-Pins (after the Duke of Albany, the fourth son of Queen Victoria).

The following year, 1883, it was decided to build a railway station in Juan-les-Pins on the Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée (PLM) line that had been there since 1863.

Exterior of Juan-les-Pins train station.
Railway bridge on Ave. Amiral Courbet, Juan les Pins

In 1926, the famous Hotel " Le Provençal " was opened and received guests like Charlie Chaplin, Lilian Harvey, Jack L. Warner and Man Ray.[2]

Le Provençal currently being renovated as of 2013

Jazz à Juan

Main article: Jazz à Juan

Cultural references

Peter Sarstedt famously mentions Juan-les-Pins in his 1969 UK number one hit, "Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)"; a portrait of a girl who becomes a member of the Euro jet-set. The song mentions that the girl spends her summer vacations in Juan-les-Pins.

"Golfe Juan" is the name of a pointillist painting done by Paul Signac, a French neo-impressionist, in 1896.

Juan-les-Pins is prominent in Sartre's The Reprieve, the second volume of his Roads to Freedom trilogy.

The area is also the home of Lanny Budd, the protagonist in eleven Upton Sinclair novels.

In Charles Jackson's novel The Lost Weekend, the main character, Don Birnam, mentions a holiday in Juan-les-Pins. In Alan Furst's novel "Kingdom of Shadows", protagonist Nicholas Morath, his Argentine girlfriend Cara, and assorted friends spend early June 1938 in Juan-les-Pins.

Points of interest

Personalities

Twin towns

See also

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Juan-les-Pins.
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/27/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.