Head to St. Francis Square to admire the facades of the COMMUNAL PALAIS, which was the former Nice Town Hall!.

The historic buildings of St. Francis Square are an exceptional monumental complex in their age and importance in the political and social history of Nice and are inscribed, with the whole square, in the Plan de Backup and Enhancement (PSMV) of the Old Nice. This redevelopment is part of a context of reappropriation and beautification of the historic districts of Nice.

Witness to three centuries of municipal life and inscribed in the additional inventory of historical monuments since 1949, the Communal Palace has recently benefited from maintenance of its facades, restoration of its porch and revision of its roof.

Institutional symbol of Nice's urban and political history

Until the 12th century, the whole city of Nice was concentrated on the Castle Hill. In the middle of the 13th century, the Franciscans built a church and a convent on the edge of the Paillon, in this plain, then uninhabited, which would become the Old Nice. In the 16th century, following the transformation of the Castle Hill into a fortress, the Communal Palace, like the cathedral, descended from the Upper City to the Lower Town. The municipal authorities settled in the vicinity of the Church and the Franciscan convent. Over the centuries, these three buildings will form a single complex.

The fate of the Communal Palace, the common house of the Niçois from 1584 to 1868, thus illustrates all the stages of the urban extension movement to the present metropolis. As for the Franciscan Church and Convent, they are today the only monumental testimonies of medieval architecture in Nice.