"Italy with a touch of France or vice... " a Menton Travel Page by Pavlik_NL

The last town one meets before crossing the French Italian border is Menton. This town was part of quite a lot of empires and states, seeing some pass into oblivian and others still hanging on in present days. The town is famous for it's micro-climate that is almost tropical. Here almost all plants on earth are able to grow and blossom, making it to an ideal place for exotic gardening. This has been taken on fanatically in the last few hundred years. Menton is THE gardening town along the Cote d'Azur and offers a wide range in public gardens with numerous species.

The microclimate that Menton has is created by the Alpes mountains and the Mediterranean sea. The first reach here the highest near the coast and screen of the town and vicinity from cold influences from the North and West. The sea provides moisture and takes care that the heat of the sun does not reach too high levels for fauna. Temperatures here never drop lower then 5 degrees Celsius. To give an example of the special nature here. One of the "jardins" holds a collection of over 700 different plants.

When walking through Menton one must sometimes have the feeling "where to be". Styles and architecture run through one another and though being in France, one can't supress the feeling to be in Italy as well. History recalls that here already in prehistoric times people lived. In modern times the town fell in the hands of the French only a few centuries ago. Before that it was Monagascan and belonged for a long time to the Sardinian empire.