Statue of Victor De Cessole

Born into an old Nice family, the knight Victor de Cessole, an aesthete, humanist, and open to new experiences, was a major force in the discovery of the mountains by city dwellers, the creation of archives of an unexplored territory, and the emergence of new leisure activities—hiking, mountaineering, and skiing—in the Alpes-Maritimes.
Beginning in 1889, captivated by the sublime beauty of these unspoiled lands, he traveled the Alpine valleys, climbed to the peaks, and opened climbing...