Cannes, a watering-place in the French department of Alpes-Maritimes, charmingly situated on a bay of the Mediterranean, 19 miles SW. of Nice by rail. Founded by the Romans on a promontory between their Via Aurelia and the sea, during the middle ages it was held as a fief by the convent of the Lérins, and Abbot Adelbert began to build the Vigie or watch-tower in 1070. It was repeatedly attacked by the Barbary pirates, and twice entered by Charles V., who slept here in 1536. The most disastrous year ever known was 1580, that of the great plague; though during the wars of religion it was sacked by the Duke of Savoy. When Massena lived in it and Murat gave a ball on the shore (1815), it contained about 3000 inhabitants. It was in the roadstead of the Golfe Jouan that Napoleon landed when he returned from Elba. Entering Cannes after dusk, he made his bivouac on the shore, but left it at 2 A.M. of the 2d March 1815, to march by the hill road, via Grasse and Digne, upon Grenoble and Paris. Lord Brougham first (1834) selected Cannes as a health-resort. The town at the census of 1891 contained 15,140 inhabitants, but in winter has upwards of twice that number, including the visitors. These are of all kindreds and tongues. Alexis de Tocqueville, Prosper Merimée, Louis Blanc, Victor Cousin, Auerbach, and J. B. Dumas have died in Cannes. The Duke of Albany died at the Villa Nevada in the spring of 1884. In 1887 Queen Victoria came to Cannes to visit the place, and to see the beautiful Albany Memorial Church of St George of
England, erected with funds raised by the Prince of Wales.
Cannes is celebrated for the salubrity of its climate. A range of low wooded hills shelters it from the north, and it occupies the centre of the great curved bay, 14 miles in width, of which the Cap Roux and the Cap d'Antibes form the extremities. It has a small port, and a trade in flowers, which becomes yearly of greater importance. There are farms of violets, roses, oranges, tuberoses, jessamine, and cassia. See Miss Dempster's Maritime Alps and their Seaboard (1884).