This hotel saw its heyday during World War II, when the south of France became an unoccupied “free zone,” leading artists to seek refuge there. La Colombe d’Or welcomed some of the best-known artists of the era — Georges Braque, Alexander Calder, and more — in exchange for their paintings, which, to this day, still cover the walls. It was in nearby Vence that Matisse would design a church that remains one of the most striking examples of the artist’s aesthetic impact.

Largely regarded as one of the greatest religious sanctuaries of the 20th century, this chapel was built and decorated by Henri Matisse between 1947 and 1951. Every detail of its construction, from the stark white façade to the palette of the stained-glass windows and gestural murals, is a master class in color and contrast. On display in glass cabinets, the priest vestments designed by Matisse forgo the blacks and browns of traditional robes for bold patterns and vibrant pinks and blues.

In 1950, the multi-hyphenate French writer Jean Cocteau went to spend a week in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat at the Villa Santo Sospir — and ended up staying 11 years. Now known as la villa tatouée, “the tattooed villa,” the house’s walls are covered in the artist’s characteristic charcoal line drawings, whose whimsical, Greek-mythology-inspired designs embody the sunny, liberated essence of the Riviera.

Musée Marc Chagall in Nice is dedicated to the painter’s religious-themed works. To lighten up the spiritual heft of the saintly paintings on display, Chagall personally directed that each of his paintings depicting scenes from Genesis and Exodus be hung by themselves on separate walls. Chagall worked directly with landscape designer Henri Fish on the grounds, which includes an outdoor pool and rows of African lillies, which were planted so they would bloom by July 7, the artist's birthday.

The French critic Anatole Jakovsky wrote poetry as well as essays about his friends Jean Arp, Alexander Calder, and Joan Miró before dedicating himself to promoting the work of self-taught artists. In his personal collection, paintings, sculptures, drawings, and posters trace the evolution of what he called “naive art” through the work of André Bauchant, Séraphine Louis, René Rimbert, and Grandma Moses, among others.

“Beauty,” Jean Cocteau once said, “cannot be recognized with a cursory glance.” As Cocteau saw it, art is more of a higher calling than an aesthetic one. Nowhere is this philosophy more apparent than the Chapelle Saint-Pierre, a 16th-century chapel dedicated to St. Peter, patron saint of fishermen. In 1965, Cocteau completely restored and repainted the house of worship in Villefranche-sur-Mer with a heavy Dadaist brush. Every inch of the interior features cartoon-like depictions of symbols of St

Baroness Béatrice de Rothschild oversaw every detail of the construction of her Belle Époque villa and gardens in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat between 1905 and 1912, employing only the best talents. The baroness bequeathed the estate to the Académie des Beaux-Arts the year before she passed in 1934, and it is now managed by Culturespaces. The villa’s Venetian marouflage canvases, Louis XV carpets, and collection of Jean-Frédéric Schall paintings have also been restored to their original splendor.

There’s no artist more synonymous with the Riviera than Picasso, who lived and worked in a Provençal estate in Mougins for the last decade of his life. In 1946, Picasso was invited to set up a studio in Château Grimaldi in Antibes. There, he created 23 paintings and 44 drawings, including Les Clés d’Antibes (The Keys of Antibes), all of which he left behind for the city to keep. A decade later, Picasso was named “Honorary Citizen of Antibes” and to this day remains a town hero.