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NICE LETTER:Once a glamorous playground, France’s fifth city is today one of the country’s most forward-looking places

AS THE commemorative flags billowing along the sweeping curve of the Baie des Anges in Nice proclaim, it’s 150 years since the Mediterranean city was ceded to France as a reward for French help in the second Italian war of independence against Austria. The locally born Italian hero Giuseppe Garibaldi was irate about the handover, knowing well – as generations of film stars, millionaires, princes, mafiosi and tourists would later come to realise – that France had quite a trophy on its hands.