A guide to Saint Martin-Vésubie

You can't Alp but fall in love with it

Posted by: Josh, 08 June 2026

Saint Martin Vesubie, seen from the start of the Cime de la Palu hiking trail

Close to 1000m up in the Maritime Alps, just over an hour’s drive from Nice by car, is the medieval village of Saint-Martin-Vésubie.

A small enclave dating back to at least the 12th Century, when it first appears in records as Saint-Martin-de-Lantosque, Saint Martin-Vésubie is situated just inside the boundaries of the Mercantour National Park and close to the border with Italy.

A gateway to alpine hiking and a wonderful place to pass a few restful days surrounded by high mountains and greenery, it could also be your base for a winter skiing holiday, with La Colmiane ski resort and its five green, six blue, eight red and two black runs only a few kilometres away.

For those not into tiring walks up steep hills or alpine sports, Saint Martin Vésubie is just as good for sitting in a cute village square with a coffee or a glass of something stronger and taking life easy in the Alps.

This is our guide to visiting Saint Martin-Vésubie.

Mountains in the Vesubie valley in the French Maritime Alps. The most distant peaks are lightly covered in snow

Things to do in Saint Martin-Vésubie

Our main motivation for visiting Saint Martin-Vésubie was our desire to find some nice Alpine hiking trails to explore. We were not disappointed. There are some great walks in the area – enough, in fact, that we’ve dedicated a whole section to it below.

You might also be interested in cycling in the area, with several challenging routes starting in Saint Martin-Vésubie and the nearby town of Roquebillieres and taking you on loops around some of the higher nearby peaks – including a couple, the Col de Turini and the Col Saint Martin, which have made occasional appearances in the Tour de France. Neither of us are nearly proficient enough on a bike to handle such routes, so read this guide if you’re interested in finding out more.

For other sporty activities, there’s a small travel bureau in town offering details on several local guides who might be able to help you arrange a hike in areas a bit further out from the village – or even help you go rock climbing, canyoning, or other exhausting adventure sports, should the feeling take you.

If you’re not in the mood for being quite so active and simply want to relax and unwind, and who could blame you, you could investigate the hot baths and spa treatments on offer at Pure Montagne resort and spa which, while slightly on the pricier side, are in a fantastic location. We recommend booking a couple of weeks in advance since, as we found out to our detriment, the spa books up quickly even when the hotel is quieter than usual. Once you’ve finished your treatment, the hotel bar serves good coffee, cocktails, and nice food with views of the mountains through big glass windows.

If you don’t feel like indulging in a full spa treatment but still need some R&R on your trip, the thermal baths in Berthemont les Bains are an alternative to consider. You’ll need to drive or take a short taxi ride to get there if you’re staying in Saint Martin-Vésubie village.

A narrow street in Saint Martin Vesubie in the French Alps. A sign for a butchers, Chez Marco, hangs over the street

Rue de Lago in Saint Martin-Vesubie, France. The street runs through a low arch underneath another building

Lastly, it would be a shame to leave Saint Martin-Vésubie without exploring the oldest parts of the village. The Notre Dame de l’Assomption church, which was built in the late 17th century, is the most well-known landmark, with its stone bell tower standing out above the surrounding houses and shops when you see the village from above.

It doesn’t take long to explore the whole village – no more than 45 minutes, unless you have a keen interest in the interior of the church – but Liz and I really enjoyed wandering along the old streets with very few other people around. While the village isn’t as spectacular as some of the more famed medieval locales along the coast near Nice – Eze, Menton, or even Villefranche, to name just a few examples – it’s still more than charming enough to anyone who doesn’t have the opportunity to see similar villages in their home countries.

A house at a fork in the streets in the old part of Saint Martin Vesubie village.

If you’re not staying for long, I’d suggest a short stroll around the old part of the village before walking all the way up Rue Dr Cagnoli, an old street with a little stream running all the way down the centre of it, and up to the Collet Path for your first short hike of your stay in Saint Matin-Vésubie. Which brings me neatly to…

Hiking

Saint Martin-Vésubie is ideal for those, like me and Liz, looking for their first taste of hiking in the Alps. On the very helpful guide that you can obtain from the tourism information office in the village, there are four hikes listed: two shorter, gentle hikes lasting around three hours each; and two longer, much more demanding treks to nearby mountain peaks.

We’ve written about one of each of these hikes in a bit more detail on our blog, the Collet Path and the Cime de la Palu. I've also written about a cool species of bug you might see on these walk, since there's sadly nothing you or Liz can do to stop me.

Snow covered mountain peaks in Saint Martin Vesubie seen from the Collet Path

A Springtime walk on the Collet Path lets you hike on a dry, safe trails while still seeing the remains of the winter snow

We found both were worth your time and, in the latter case, great deal of effort. While we can’t tell you for sure that Saint Martin-Vésubie is the best place in France or its neighbouring countries to go hiking – we've not yet been to nearly enough places to make such a strong claim – we can say with certainty that it’s a great place for mountain walks.

Without giving away all of our final thoughts below, Saint Martin-Vésubie has gone right to the top of the list of places we want to revisit. We’re keen to finish the extra hikes we didn’t get chance to go on this time, and to see more of the surrounding areas – you might, if you have time, want to drive or take the bus (which runs only on Saturdays and Sundays) to nearby La Bollene-Vésubie to explore some of the trails there. Just watch out for the motorists if you visit in January.

Where to stay

We don’t often plug one particular hotel over another, since we're not getting paid to do so and it's more or less impossible to know how the hotels we have stayed in compare to those that we haven't. But we will make an exception when we find one that we genuinely love, and that we think anyone reading our guides would too.

Pure Montagne resort was almost everything we could have hoped for as a mountain retreat. We booked one of the junior suites so that we could do a little bit of our own cooking, and so that I had somewhere to melt down bars of mildly nutty chocolate into milk to drink on our terrace after sunset.

Liz and I both enjoy cooking, even in our small flat in London, and getting to make our version of rustic French food in a bright, spacious kitchen with views of the Maritime Alps made our stay even closer to perfect than it would have been if we’d only eaten at nearby restaurants.

Pastry, cheese, bread and fruit on a terrace at Pure Montagne Resort in Saint Martin vesubie

Pure Montagne resort Saint Martin Vesubie Lounge Bar food

Breakfast bought from the local shops to eat on our terrace on the left, and a simple but tasty lunch from the hotel lounge on the right

While there is a fancy restaurant at the hotel, it didn’t list any vegetarian choices on the menu. So if you’re a vegetarian or vegan in need of a bite and you don’t have the time or energy to cook, you’ll need to look elsewhere.

Where to eat

We only stayed in Saint Martin-Vésubie village for three days, so we’ve only a couple of tips to share. The first and probably most important one is to think ahead about what days you’re planning to stay. We found that at least half the restaurants in the village were closed on Monday and Tuesday, and nowhere that was open particularly appealed to us. A lot of restaurants that stated they were open online were not open in reality.

The small pizzeria, the inventively named “Pizzeria La Pizza”, is listed as being open 7 days a week. It’s not the best you’ll ever have – perhaps only half as good as the best we had on this year’s French vacation, the unexpectedly excellent thin-crust pizza from Pizzeria Jean-Louis at the side of winding road through the Verdon Gorge – but it’s not the worst you’ll ever eat either.

If you like a (dangerously) sweet treat, I would recommend the coffee éclair from Boulangerie la Suisse Nicoise near the town hall. It’s not the very finest and fanciest patisserie, but it’s very satisfying if you have as sweet a tooth as I do. The bakery also sells a large selection of breads to get you started in preparing a packed lunch to bring on your hikes.

As I mentioned in the where to stay section above, we didn’t eat at the L’air du Temps restaurant at Pure Montagne resort. We did, however, enjoy a nice lunch at the hotel's Bar Lounge. The portions are very generous; Liz’s salad would have been more than enough to feed the entire herd of alpine cattle we met on our hike the next morning.

A young cow standing near a pine tree in a field on the Cime de la Palu hike in Saint Martin-Vesubie

We enjoyed seeing this young man on the Cime de la Palu hike. The older members of his herd are absolument énorme, but thankfully kept fenced off from wandering onto the trails

How to get there

Fly into Nice, enjoy exploring the French Riviera, then either drive for an hour or take the number 90 bus from Les Arboras/Université bus stop directly to Saint Martin-Vésubie.

The bus leaves three times a day from the stop next to the tram station. We were slightly confused by this, as there were signs at the tram station directing you to another stop around six minutes’ walk away on a main road. You can get on the bus here, but you’ll have to signal for it to stop.

Buses have space underneath for luggage. On one leg of the journey, we were able to stash our cases; on the other, the bus driver directed me to sit with my case in the space designated for wheelchair users.

To use the bus, buy a travel card from any tram or train station. It’s 2 euros for the card, then a further 1.70 for each single ticket you add to it. If you haven’t already bought your card from the airport station on arrival in nice, machines to buy the cards and your two singles – one outbound journey, and one for your return – are on the platforms at Les Arboras/Université.

There are no train stations close to Saint Martin-Vésubie.

Two pinecones on a tree next to a hiking trail in Saint Martin Vesubie. One is still growing and has a purple colour and smooth texture; the other is brown and woody

Useful tips

If you’re backpacking around or travelling light and need to freshen up your clothes, there is a launderette which is open 7 days a week, 7.30am – 8pm. It’s right opposite Lou Pitchoun restaurant.

There are three grocery stores in the village. Casino and Carrefour are there for all necessities, including toiletries and insect repellent should you have forgotten to pack any. Terre et Bio is for slightly fancier organic foods, if you’re looking to cook yourself something nice. There’s a bigger Carrefour in Roquebilliere if you have a car to get there.

You’re staying in the mountains. Don’t be surprised if you have a steep walk to your chosen hotel or lodge, so think for a moment before travelling about whether you absolutely need to bring your biggest suitcase with you.

While there is a lot of very lovely wildlife in this area, don’t visit with too high expectations for how much you’re going to see. If you visit at the right time of year and you hike at the right times, you might see all kinds of interesting creatures: snakes, marmots, ibex, countless birds of prey. Or you might not be so lucky. Nature’s like that, if you don’t know exactly where to look and don’t have all the time in the world to wait to spot it.

Final thoughts

A long view of the Vesubie Valley near Saint Martin Vesubie, looking down over low peaks

Josh's final thoughts

We absolutely loved Saint Martin-Vésubie. Between the cute old buildings and pretty streets, and the brilliant hiking trails, we got absolutely everything we’d been hoping for out of our stay.

There’s a few places we’ve visited in recent years that we’re hoping to revisit in the near future – Furnas in the Azores, parts of Hokkaido in Japan, Bilbao – but Saint Martin-Vésubie’s at the very top of that list, as part of a bigger trip around this part of the Alps.

Liz's final thoughts

I knew the Alps would be beautiful, but I was surprised by how charming the ancient streets of St Martin-Vésubie were. Between the scenery and the gorgeous suite at Pure Montagne, our stay was truly magical. Even though a lot of the local restaurants were closed, we were able to get a lot of really good local ingredients at the supermarkets, so having a kitchen to prepare our own meals was a real bonus.

The dinner Josh made for me in our suite on our first night using French local produce was delicious, not to mention extremely romantic. Another highlight for me was eating the breakfast we threw together on our terrace, including fresh, sweet local fruit, creamy French cheese, buttery pastries, a crusty baguette, and cheap but delicious champagne, all of which we were able to pick up at the Carrefour. Add in the fresh mountain air and alpine views and I was more or less in heaven.