The Debate | Diplomacy

Nice: France’s Mediterranean Gateway to the Indo-Pacific

France’s fifth-largest city is increasingly serving as a showcase for Indo-Pacific diplomacy — including the Indian PM’s latest visit.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Emmanuel Macron shake hands before attending the Bharat Innovates event in Nice, France, June 14, 2026.

Nice, a Mediterranean city in southeastern France, was chosen by India’s Ministry of Education to host the Bharat Innovates summit from June 14 to 16. In the first time the event was held outside India, it brought together more than 120 Indian start-ups alongside French and European innovation actors.

Inaugurated one day before the beginning of the G-7 summit in Évian, the gathering also provided an opportunity for French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to meet once again. It was Modi’s eighth visit to France since taking office, underscoring the remarkable momentum of the France-India partnership. The program of this visit – focused on innovation, artificial intelligence and emerging technologies – illustrated how far bilateral relations have evolved beyond their traditional strategic and defense foundations.

Meetings between French and Indian leaders have become routine. What made this one noteworthy was its location. Why Nice?

France’s fifth-largest city is increasingly serving as a diplomatic showcase. Nice offers an attractive combination of international visibility, Mediterranean splendor, and a degree of distance from the formalism associated with the French capital.

Modi’s visit is no isolated case. In fact, it bears a striking resemblance to the visit Chinese President Xi Jinping paid to the city in 2019. More recently, Nice hosted the third United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC III) in 2025, during which France convened its sixth France-Pacific regional summit.

Together, these events suggest that Nice is no longer merely a tourist destination but an increasingly important venue for French diplomacy, with a particular emphasis on the Indo-Pacific region. 

A Contested Border Town That Became a Tourism Capital

Founded by Phocaean Greeks in the 4th century BCE as Nikaia, Nice successively came under Roman, Ostrogothic, Genoese, Savoyard, and Piedmontese rule before becoming definitively French in 1860 – later than some of France’s present-day Indo-Pacific overseas territories. Once a contested frontier town, Nice gradually transformed into one of Europe’s leading tourist destinations. Successive waves of visitors, exiles, and artists helped forge its cosmopolitan identity. From the late 19th century onward, the city’s development was remarkably rapid, fueled by growing international demand for seaside leisure and winter resorts.

Initially a fashionable winter resort for the British aristocracy, Nice later attracted Russian émigrés fleeing the Bolshevik Revolution, as well as American expatriates and socialites of the Roaring Twenties, including F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. Artists, writers, and intellectuals also flocked to the city, drawn by its climate and distinctive light, emblematic of what came to be known as the Côte d’Azur. The introduction of paid holidays in France in 1936 democratized tourism and transformed Nice into a mass tourist destination. Today, the city boasts the second largest hotel capacity in France after Paris.

This cosmopolitan legacy, combined with modern infrastructure, has transformed Nice into a geopolitical crossroads.

Geopolitical Crossroads and Diplomatic Showcase

Despite its geographical position nestled between the Mediterranean and the Alps (as reflected in the name of the department, Alpes-Maritimes), Nice has benefited from the development of its airport. 

Nice Côte d’Azur Airport has become a key infrastructure for regional and international connectivity. Ranking as France’s second busiest after Paris (Roissy and Orly combined), Nice’s airport handles 15 million passengers across more than 120 destinations in 45 countries, with nearly two-thirds of its traffic on international routes. A structuring tool for the territory, it makes this geographically constrained city one of the best-connected in Europe.

Add Sophia Antipolis – Europe’s largest technology park, home to over 2,000 French and foreign firms and easily accessible from Nice – and the picture of a genuine crossroads emerges.

The city has therefore become a venue of choice for........

© The Diplomat