This long pedestrian thoroughfare, half street, half square, is the nerve center of Old Nice, the heart of the Vieille Ville and the stage-set for the daily dramas of marketplace and café life. Framed with 18th-century houses and shaded by plane trees, the long, narrow square bursts into a fireworks-show of color Tuesday through Sunday, when flower-market vendors roll armloads of mimosas, irises, roses, and orange blossoms into cornets (paper cones) and thrust them into the arms of shoppers (Tues.-Sat. 6 AM-5:30 PM, Sun. 6-noon). Cafés and restaurants, all more or less touristy, fill outdoor tables with onlookers who bask in the sun. At the far-east end, antiques and brocante (collectibles) draw avid junk-hounds every Monday morning. Just beyond, Place Félix seems to lure the most fashionable crowd to see and be seen, perhaps because there are no market stands to get in the way of the most visible café tables, or because it provides clearest access to sun on cool winter days.
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