Riviera ('seashore'), a term applied to the narrow strip of coast-land bordering the Gulf of Genoa, strictly from Nice to Spezzia, but generally understood to include the whole coast of the department of the Alpes Maritimes, and the Italian coast as far as Leghorn. West of Genoa it is called the Riviera di Poneute, or western coast, and beyond Genoa the Riviera di Levante, or eastern coast. From Hyères to Genoa is 203 miles; from Genoa to Leghorn, 112; sheltered on the north by mountains, the district enjoys an exceptionally favoured climate, no other region north of Palermo and Valencia being so mild in winter. The western section is the mildest and most frequented. It abounds in the most striking and beautiful scenery, and is planted with numerous health and fashion resorts—Nice, Monaco, Mentone, Ventimiglia, San Remo, Bordighera, &c.; and west of Nice are Hyères, Fréjus, Cannes, Grasse, Antibes. The various sections of the coast of 'La Provence Maritime' have each certain distinctive peculiarities, but none of them are entirely exempt from occasional cold winds. The Saracens held posts on this coast, and levied blackmail for centuries. The famous Corniche (Ital. Cornice) road leads along the coast from Nice to Genoa.
There are guide-books by Baedeker, Murray, C. B. Black, Dr Hugh Macmillan, and Miss Dempster, Maritime Alps (1884); A. J. C. Hare's The Rivièras (1897); Spark's The Riviera (1880), and works cited at the article HEALTH-RESORTS; and especially The Riviera, Ancient and Modern, by Ch. Lenthéric, an invaluable and standard work (trans. by C. West, 1895).