Alpes-Maritimes


Alpes-Maritimes is a department of France located in the extreme southeast corner of the country, on the border with Italy and on the Mediterranean coast. Part of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, it had a population of 1,083,310 in 2017.
It has become in recent years one of the world's most attractive destinations, featuring cities such as Nice, Cannes, Antibes and Grasse, and numerous alpine ski resorts. Alpes-Maritimes also entirely surrounds Monaco. The department's inhabitants are called Maralpins or Maralpines; it has the same flag and arms as the City of Nice.

Geography

Overview

The Alpes-Maritimes department is surrounded by the departments of Var in the southwest, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence in the northwest, Italy to the north and east, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. It surrounds the Principality of Monaco on the west, north and east.
Its topography is very mixed. As its name suggests, most of the department is a constituent part of the overall topographic Alps – including the Maritime Alps – but it also has the distinction of being a coastal district with its Mediterranean coast. The coastal area, urbanized and densely populated, includes all the cities in an almost continuous conurbation from Cannes to Menton, while the larger but sparsely populated mountainous area is fully rural with the exception of the three large resorts of Valberg, Auron, and Isola 2000.

Summits and passes

The highest point of the department is the Cime du Gélas on the Franco-Italian border which dominates the Vallée des Merveilles further east. The summit of Monte Argentera is higher at above sea level, but it is located in Italy. There is also Mount Mounier, which dominates the south of the vast Dôme de Barrot, formed of a mass more than thick of red mudstones deeply indented by the gorges of Daluis and Cians. Except in winter, four passes allow passage to the north of the Mercantour/Argentera mountain range whose imposing barrier is covered in winter snow which is visible from the coast. From the west, the Route des Grandes Alpes enters the Cayolle Pass first on the way to the Alps and the sources of the Var in the commune of Entraunes. Then the route follows the Col de la Bonette – the highest pass in Europe at – to connect to the valley of the Tinée then the Ubaye. Further east, the Col de la Lombarde above Isola 2000 allows access to the shrine of Saint-Anne de Vinadio in Italy. Finally, at its eastern end, the Col de Tende links with Cuneo in Italy.

Landscape and forest vegetation

The only region of the Alps close to Nice has an afforestation rate of 60.9%, slightly higher than the average of the department and well above the average of 39.4% for the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region.
The rivers in alphabetical order are:
It is the climate that made the Côte d'Azur famous. The current department of Alpes-Maritimes, however, does not have only one climate, the complex terrain and high mountains divide the department between those who are well exposed and those which are less and even with the mild Mediterranean climate there can be violent storms and prolonged droughts.
The coastal area has a Mediterranean climate. The interior, especially in the north, has a mountain climate. Around Cannes is a particularly warm micro-climate due to the high hills warming the air which descends on the city.
One of the attractions of the department is its level of sunshine: 300 days per year. Despite this the department is also the most stormy of France with an average of 70 to 110 thunderstorm days per year, arising from the differences in temperature due to a warm sea in autumn.
As soon as one moves away from the coast, towards the west of the department, the interior plains the climate is a little less temperate but just as sunny. In summer, the temperature very easily exceeds, while the average is only on the Nice coast for July and August. Occasional frost is possible in winter when, unlike in Nice, were they are very rare.
In the east of the department, unlike the west, there are no plains. In the Menton region, the altitude increases very rapidly inland, so the sea tempers the atmosphere much more: the maximum in summer is on average and the winters are milder than in the interior Frost is rare.
Snow is rare on the coast, however, it happens that good falls surprise the Côte d'Azur, as was the case in the winter of 2004-2005 when the city of Nice woke up with a few centimetres of snow, creating traffic problems. More recently, in February 2010, more than of snow was measured in Cannes and nearly in the Grasse region.
In the Alps the climate is mountainous, and there is snow from November to May.

Subdivisions

Alpes-Maritimes is divided into two arrondissements: Grasse and Nice, twenty-seven cantons and 163 communes.
As of 1 January 2014, there were seven intercommunalities:
The most populous cities in the department in 2012 were:
The Roman military district of Alpes Maritimae was created by Augustus in 14 BC. It became a full Roman province in the middle of the 1st century AD, with its capital first at Cemenelum and subsequently at Embrun. At its greatest extent in AD 297, the province reached north to Digne and Briançon.
Conquered by the French First Republic during the French Revolutionary Wars, a department of Alpes-Maritimes was first set up in 1793 with different boundaries from those of the modern department. In 1793, Alpes-Maritimes included Monaco, but not Grasse, which was then part of the department of Var as an historical part of France. In 1805, San Remo was included after the disbandment of the Ligurian Republic. In 1812, the department had three arrondissements with the following cantons:
The population of the department in 1812 was 131,266, and its area was, covering both present-day Arrondissement of Nice, Principality of Monaco and Province of Imperia.
In 1814, at the close of the Napoleonic Wars, the territory was restored to the Crown of Savoy by the Congress of Vienna.
In 1860 Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, one of the architects of Italian unity with the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, negotiated support for Napoleon III in exchange for Savoy and the County of Nice as set forth in the Treaty of Turin. The annexation was confirmed on 15 and 16 April 1860 by 30,712 male electors enrolled in the 89 communes of the County of Nice who, for the first time, had universal male suffrage by plebiscite. The "Yes" vote for reunification with France was 83.8% of registered voters and 99.2% of votes. The new department of Alpes-Maritimes consisted of the former County of Nice, divided into an Arrondissement of Nice and an Arrondissement of Puget-Théniers, and a portion of the Var department, which formed the Arrondissement of Grasse. However, the County of Nice did not include Tende and La Brigue, which were still part of Piedmont-Sardinia.
For economic reasons, the Arrondissement of Puget-Théniers was merged into to the Arrondissement of Nice in 1926. Since that time, the department has had two arrondissements.
In 1947, in accordance with the Treaty of Paris and as a referendum result favourable to their attachment to France, the communes of Tende and La Brigue which had not been ceded to France in 1860, were attached to the department.

Heraldry

Administration

Politics

Since the Second World War, the department has voted to the right. It has nine constituencies for the National Assembly. Following the legislative election of 2017, six constituencies are represented by members of The Republicans right-wing party and three by the centrist La République En Marche! party. Of the five Senators representing the department in the upper house of Parliament, four are right-wing and one is left-wing. Of the fifty-two departmental councilors, forty-two are right and ten are left.
Alpes-Maritimes has experienced problems of corruption in its politicians in the 1980s and 1990s which led to criminal convictions, including those of Nice Mayor Jacques Médecin and Cannes Mayor Michel Mouillot, as well as Antibes Mayor Pierre Merli, criminally indicted in 1995 for a real estate scam and convicted four years later.

Departmental Council of Alpes-Maritimes

The President of the Departmental Council is Charles-Ange Ginésy, who succeeded Éric Ciotti in 2017. Both are members of The Republicans party. The LR majority in the departmental council is one of the largest majorities in any such institution in France.

Representation in Parliament

Members of the National Assembly
Alpes-Maritimes elected the following members of the National Assembly during the 2017 legislative election:
Senators
As of 2020, the department's five Senators are Marc Daunis, Colette Giudicelli, Jean-Pierre Leleux, Dominique Estrosi Sassone and Henri Leroy.

Budget

In 2011, the draft departmental budget amounted to €1.3 billion of which 498 million was devoted to social action and 346 million to operations. Capital expenditures was just over 250 million euros.
In 2010, the department was the third most indebted in France with €942 million of debt or 68.4% of the annual budget. This debt amounted to 2,460 euros per fiscal tax unit and 859 euros per person. The trend of change in debt over the last decade has been a sharp increase: + 440% between 2001 and 2009 and 26% between 2009 and 2010. There was only €43 million in debt in 2003.

Projects

The Departmental Council of Alpes-Maritimes is currently sponsoring several large projects:
The Alpes-Maritimes Departmental Council has charged 1 euro per vehicle journey in the department, regardless of distance, since 1 January 2008.

Demographics

When Nice became part of France in 1860, it was still a small town; the department had fewer than 200,000 inhabitants. However, the population grew quickly from 300,000 at the beginning of the 20th century to over a million. The population is aging because of the number of retirees who move to the coast.
The population is now concentrated in the urban region that includes Antibes, Cannes, Grasse, Nice, and Menton, and which constitutes 90% of the total population.
The department had 1,079,100 inhabitants in 2009, making it the nineteenth most populated department in France. There are 163 communes including 106 under 2000 inhabitants, 38 from 2000 to 9999 inhabitants, 15 between 10,000 and 49,999 inhabitants, 3 between 50,000 and 199,999 inhabitants, and one with over 200,000 inhabitants. The Population density rose to 251 inhabitants per square kilometre in 2009.
According to INSEE 39.5% of children born in 2011 in the department of Alpes-Maritimes have at least one parent born abroad, 15.4% have a father born in North Africa.
The area is also known for its extremely large population of people of Italian descent. About 40% of the population of the Alpes-Maritimes claim their ancestry as being solely Italian, and as many as 80% of the population can trace some degree of ancestry back to Italy before it was annexed by France in the 1860s.

Economy

The economy of the Alpes-Maritimes is characterized by the importance of the tertiary sector. The department has, in addition to tourism and traditional services, a relatively high level of corporate research and higher level of services. Agriculture is of little importance and industry plays a relatively small role although it has diversified into activities with high technological value. The construction and public works sector is quite important. The economy is very sensitive to changes in the national and international situation. The rate of unemployment is 9.1%.
According to the INSEE, in 2005 the GDP per capita of the Alpes-Maritimes was 27,723 euros which ranked it as the thirteenth highest department in France. GDP was 29.6 billion euros. According to Eurostat, GDP per capita at market prices in 2008, the department had a GDP per capita of 30,700 euros, which is also ranked it thirteenth in France.

Distribution of employment

Tourism is an essential industry for the entire coastal region and is highly developed. On the coast, thanks to the mild climate, towns are resort destinations all year round. In the mountains, there are winter sports stations that have received abundant snow in recent years, particularly Isola 2000.
There are also well-developed industries such as the perfume industry in Grasse, new technologies from Sophia-Antipolis, and the aerospace industry in Cannes-Mandelieu, where there is the first European satellite builders and the first industrial plant dedicated to spacecraft manufacturing.

Tourism

Seaside

The presence of the Mediterranean Sea and the French Alps under a mild sky has favoured one dominant activity: tourism, which accounts for 64,000 jobs directly in the Alpes-Maritimes. For only the city of Nice the tourism turnover represents a 12 to 13% share of the whole tourism market in France. The capital of the Côte d'Azur is the fifth most populous city in France. The city of Nice also has the second largest airport in France, after Paris and its three airports at Roissy, Orly and Le Bourget. There are nearly 13.5 million passengers per year passing through Nice Airport.
The seaside where the majority of the population resides is one of the most popular parts of the world with many attractions:
The area inland from the busy French Riviera is an excellent base for many outdoor sports: cycling, mountain biking, skiing, walking, rock climbing, canyoning, canoeing, rafting, fishing, horse riding, Adventure parks, caving and the area has the first ever underground via ferrata. The area has internationally renowned paragliding and hang gliding flying sites at Col-de-Bleyne, Gourdon, Gréolières and Lachens.

Mountainside

In the mountains, skiing and hiking bring life to Saint-Étienne-de-Tinée, Beuil, Péone, Saint-Martin-Vésubie, Isola, Gréolières, Peïra-Cava, Col de Turini, and Turini-Camp d'argent in the Authion mountains.

Second homes

According to the general census of the population on 1 January 2008, 23.2% of available housing in the department were second homes.

Culture

Cultural life is rich and fully described in the daily regional Nice-Matin newspaper and announced in the weekly supplement JV Wednesday.

Events


Famous museums include:

Primary and secondary education

The department has 222 nursery schools, 357 primary schools and one special school. It also hosts 72 colleges, 14 vocational schools and 22 high schools, to which must be added 65 private schools.

Higher education

The University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, in Nice and neighboring areas, was founded in 1965.
Higher education is relatively underdeveloped in the department. The urban area of Nice has 35,000 students, while Rennes and Bordeaux each have 60,000.
A campus of the Paris Institute of Political Studies was established in Menton in October 2005. The Menton campus is dedicated to the relationship between the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean and the relationship of Europe with the Middle East.
Several engineering schools are also located in Sophia Antipolis:
In addition, two major business schools are located in the region:
There are is the French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation and the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Sophia Antipolis.

Trivia

The asteroid 100122 Alpes Maritimes is named in the department's honour, on the occasion of the thousandth discovery made from its territory.