Juan-les-Pins

Juan-les-Pins is a major holiday destination, with casino, nightclubs and beaches, which are made of fine grained sand, and are not straight, but instead are cut with small inlets.

A big contract bridge tournament is organised every year in early spring.

History

Situated west of the town of Antibes on the western slope of the ridge, halfway to the old fishery village of Golfe-Juan (where Napoleon landed in 1815), it had been an area with lots of stone pine trees (pins in French), where the inhabitants of Antibes used to go for a promenade, for a pic-nic in the shadow of the stone pine trees or to collect tree branches and cones for their stoves.

The village was given its name Juan-les-Pins on 12 March 1882. Why the Spanish spelling of Jean was chosen, is not clear. Other names had been discussed, such as Héliopolis, Antibes-les-Pins and Albany-les-Pins (after the Duke of Albany - son of Queen Victoria).

The following year, 1883, it was decided to build a railroad station in Juan-les-Pins on the PLM (Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée) line that had been there since 1863.

Jazz à Juan

Outside festival periods or other public arrangements, petanque players every afternoon use the area in front of the tall steel "jazz monument" for their games under the stone pine trees.

This article is licenced under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Juan-les-Pins".

User comments