The French Riviera by Car: When It Earns Its Keep and When It's a Liability

The rule, in two sentences

On the Côte d'Azur a car is a liability for most of a holiday and essential for a small slice of it. The whole skill is knowing which slice — and not paying for seven days of rental to get two days of genuine use.

This is not an argument against driving. There are places on this coast you cannot see any other way, and some of them are the best things here. But by default, for the coastal towns, the right answer is the regional train: a single line links Cannes, Antibes, Nice, Villefranche, Beaulieu, Èze-sur-Mer, Monaco and Menton, the stations are in their centres, tickets cost a few euros, and you do not sit in traffic. Any article selling you "the freedom of a car" on the Riviera without telling you that is hiding half the bill.

Where the car is a liability

Central Nice. Vieux Nice is largely pedestrian, much of the city is a 30 km/h zone, on-street parking is metered with a maximum stay, and the central underground car parks run indicatively €20–30 a day (2026). Hotels in the centre rarely have their own parking and, when they do, they charge for it separately, indicatively €25–40 a night. Add the Promenade des Anglais at six in the evening and you have a car costing you money and time to stand still.

Nice does have one intelligent answer: the park-and-ride sites on the edge of the city, on the tram lines, with a small daily charge that includes the return tram ride. If you arrive by car and you are staying in Nice, that is the only rational option.

Monaco. Two square kilometres, a small number of through-routes, tunnels and one-way streets almost everywhere. Monaco-Ville, the palace rock, is closed to non-resident traffic. The public garages are, to the principality's credit, excellent, well signposted and civilised — but paid, and their entrances back up at peak hours. At the end of May, in Grand Prix week, part of the city simply ceases to exist as a road. The details are in our piece on where to park in Monaco. And if you are arriving straight off a flight, an airport transfer from Nice to Monaco is almost always simpler than a rental car you then have to store.

The coast road in July and August. The three Corniches are spectacular and, precisely for that reason, congested: narrow, winding, full of coaches slowing everything down, with few places to pull over. Twenty kilometres can take an hour. The train does Nice to Monaco in about 25 minutes whatever the traffic.

Parking in Cannes and Antibes. In Cannes, the underground car parks along the Croisette and around the Palais des Festivals run indicatively €3–5 an hour and €25–35 a day in season. In Antibes, the old town is ringed by car parks that fill in the morning, and the Port Vauban area is permanently oversubscribed. Both towns have a central station.

The fact that settles the argument: every significant town on this coast sits on the railway. Between Cannes and the Italian border, a car gets you nowhere faster than a train does.

Where the car genuinely earns its keep

Saint-Tropez and the gulf. The one famous name on the coast without a station, with a single road in and a predictable jam at the entrance. Even here the car is only half the answer — read how to reach Saint-Tropez from Nice before you set off, because the boat from Sainte-Maxime beats driving into the centre.

The hinterland villages. Saint-Paul-de-Vence has a bus from Nice, but a slow one. Gourdon, perched above the Gorges du Loup, Tourrettes-sur-Loup, Valbonne, Mougins, Biot — these happen by car or they do not happen. One day's driving can string three or four together with a long lunch in the shade, and that is the day that justifies the rental.

The Gorges du Verdon. Two and a half hours north-west to Moustiers-Sainte-Marie, then the Route des Crêtes above the canyon and the turquoise water of the Lac de Sainte-Croix. It is the best inland day in south-east France and it is flatly impossible without a car. Leave at seven, come back at sunset.

Anything that needs a very early start. Sunrise from the Grande Corniche, a provincial market at seven, a drive to the airport at five. The regional trains do not start that early and do not go there.

Small children and a lot of luggage. With two children, a pushchair and suitcases, the logic inverts completely: the car becomes the thing that saves you rather than the thing that costs you. In France a child seat is required up to age 10 or 135 cm, and rental firms charge for one per day — if you fly with your own, you generally carry it free.

The intelligent version is hybrid, and our seven-day itinerary is built exactly that way: based in Nice, the coastal towns by train, and a car hired for the two days that actually need one.

What you need to drive in France as a Romanian driver

A Romanian licence is valid with no formalities: it is an EU licence and you do not need an international permit. Carry the licence, the vehicle registration document and proof of insurance valid in France; if the car is not yours, a written authorisation from the owner. Rental firms want a credit card in the driver's name and, under 25, add a young-driver surcharge.

Compulsory on board: a warning triangle and a high-visibility vest, and the vest must be inside the cabin within reach, not in the boot — that is precisely what gets checked. The single-use breathalyser is no longer required. Dipped headlights are mandatory in tunnels and in poor visibility, and the A8 is full of tunnels.

Limits: 130 km/h on motorways (110 in the wet), 110 on dual carriageways, 80 on single-carriageway national and departmental roads (90 in some départements, signposted), 50 in built-up areas and very often 30. The alcohol limit is 0.5 g/l, and 0.2 g/l for recently licensed drivers. Holding a phone is banned, and so are headphones and earbuds at the wheel. Fixed and mobile speed cameras are frequent on the A8, and the ticket reaches you via the rental company with an administration fee on top.

One thing to check before you leave: France operates low-emission zones (ZFE) in several cities, and the rules change from year to year. If you are driving your own car into a large city, check whether you need a Crit'Air sticker and order it in good time from the official site, since it arrives by post. Cars rented in France already have one on the windscreen.

Tolls on the A8, and how they work

The A8, "La Provençale", runs from the Italian border through Nice and Cannes towards Aix-en-Provence, and it is a tolled concession motorway. The system uses barriers: on short sections you pay a fixed amount at the barrier, on long ones you take a ticket on entry and pay on exit according to distance.

Three practical points. Lanes marked with an orange "t" are reserved for subscribers with a télépéage badge — enter one without a badge and you block the lane and everyone behind you. Contactless bank cards work at most automatic barriers, but keep some coins within reach anyway. And the cost: indicatively a few euros for the short sections around Nice and something in the order of ten to fifteen euros for longer runs west, 2026 — work out the exact figure on the operator's own toll calculator rather than from guesswork. The free alternative, the parallel national and departmental roads, is prettier and significantly slower.

Fuel

The grades are SP95, SP95-E10, SP98 and Gazole (diesel). The most expensive pumps are on the motorway; the cheapest are at hypermarkets — Carrefour, Leclerc, Auchan, Intermarché — with an indicative gap of 15–25 cents a litre, which is real money across a full tank. Round-the-clock automated pumps require a chip-and-PIN card and may pre-authorise an amount on it; they usually work with Romanian cards, but not always, so do not run the tank down betting on an unmanned pump at midnight. For how this fits a budget, see the Riviera cost guide.

The three Corniches: which one to actually drive

Between Nice and Monaco there are three parallel roads at three altitudes, and confusing them is the single most common planning mistake.

The Basse Corniche (Corniche Inférieure, D6098) runs at sea level through Villefranche, Beaulieu and Cap-d'Ail. It is beautiful and it is the slowest: traffic lights, local traffic, full car parks. In summer, leave it to the train, which runs alongside it.

The Moyenne Corniche (D6007) is the middle one, the cinematic road, with balconies above the sea and the car parks for Èze-Village. If you drive only one, drive this one — it has the best ratio of view to access. The village above is worth the stop, and how to do it properly is in the Èze guide.

The Grande Corniche (D2564) is the highest, following the old Roman road through La Turbie and past the Trophy of Augustus, with viewpoints that show you Monaco from above. The best panoramas on the coast and the least traffic. Perfect at sunset.

The ideal combination: up on the Moyenne, down on the Grande, and never touch the Basse by car.

Renting: airport or city

At Nice Côte d'Azur airport (both terminals) you get a large fleet, long opening hours and the option of dropping the car in another city — but you pay an airport surcharge and emerge straight into coastal traffic. In town, the offices around Nice-Ville station are cheaper and carry no airport fee, but they keep short hours and many close on Sundays.

The advice that saves the most money: do not take the car on your arrival day. Come in from the airport by tram or transfer, spend the first days without a car, then pick one up on the morning you head for the Verdon, the hill villages or Saint-Tropez, and hand it back that evening or the next day. You pay for two days instead of seven, and you pay for no hotel parking at all. Book an automatic in advance if you do not drive a manual, since manual is the default in France, and take a small car: the old streets and the ramps of underground car parks were not built for SUVs.

The rule that saves the most grief

If you take one thing from all of this: park once, outside the centre, and use the train for the towns. The car is for the hinterland, for the Gulf of Saint-Tropez, for sunrises and for families with luggage. The coast, from Cannes to Menton, was solved more than a century ago by a railway line built for exactly this purpose.