Every Friday the town transforms. By early morning, stalls fill the seafront promenade and the streets behind it, selling everything from Italian leather goods and linen to cheese, olives, and local olive oil. The French come for the prices as much as the goods: Italian food and household products are consistently cheaper than their equivalents across the border, and the market is the nearest equivalent of a hypermarché for much of the western Côte d'Azur.
For a traveller the market is worth arriving for even without a shopping agenda. The atmosphere is genuinely lively — the crowd is a mix of French retirees loading up on mozzarella, Italian stallholders haggling in a third language, and the odd tourist puzzling over which salami to buy. Come early; by midday the stalls start packing up, and by early afternoon it is over.