Compagnie Miranda revives centuries of Nice’s defiant history in a moonlit walking performance through the Colline du Château
Something deliciously subversive stirs on the Colline du Château after nightfall. While tourists retreat to the beach bars, Compagnie Miranda mounts a theatrical coup among the ancient ruins of la Colline du Château (Castle Hill): La Castellada is an after-hours spectacle that honours Nice’s irrepressible spirit of resistance, where washerwomen were action heroines and Italian revolutionaries had their moment
The entire rock, which has played such a central role in the city’s history throughout the millennia, becomes the theatrical insurgents’ stage in what they call “une déambulation nocturne”, an immersive theatrical night-time walk of two hours that guides audiences through the castle ruins with singers, musicians and actors in period costumes. The format is sleek yet enthralling. Set against the panoramic sweep of the Baie des Anges, eleven tableaux evoke chapters of Nice’s history and its defiant spirit.
Freshly off the Festival d’Avignon and only weeks from the start of the new theatre season, Thierry Surace, director of Cie. Miranda and the creator of the spectacle, has pulled together some of the region’s finest actors and musicians, including Sylvia Scantamburlo, Mari Laurila-Lili, Thomas Santarelli, Jérôme Schoof, and Jessica Astier, to name but a few of the vibrant cast. The show is structured around eleven tableaux, each one mounted in the original style of its era, and showing a different slice of Nice’s defiant spirit.
Starting out with the here and now, the spectator learns some fun facts about the city’s reputation, local sayings, and the peculiarities that make Niçois identity so distinct.
Then a jump back in time by 2,500 years to the Greeks, who were busy doing Mediterranean commerce into and out of the port they had built right at the foot of the hill. Named Nikaïa in honour of the Greek goddess of victory, this settlement would later become “Nice”. Meanwhile the Romans hold court at Cemenelum, today’s Cimiez. The coexistence was peaceful… for the most part, even if cultures clashed.
The next big chapter in the city’s annals is the Christianisation during the early first millennium AD, spearheaded by monks. The key event: In 1060 the relics of Sainte Réparate, a young woman martyrised in Palestine in the 3rd century, arrive in Nice. A chapel dedicated to her is built in 1075 near the town’s castle. She would eventually become the city’s patron saint and the small chapel would much later be replaced by the grand Baroque cathedral in the centre of the town bearing her name. Ordinary people, like the local fishermen, gradually come to terms with the new religion, interweaving Christian teachings with their familiar pagan traditions.
The Middle Ages see their fair share of dramas, wars, disasters, and even the plague. The rising popular theatrical art of la commedia dell’arte distracts people from their worries – entertainment as rebellion against death itself, theater as survival mechanism.
In 1543, Catherine Ségurane explodes onto the scene as Nice’s ultimate folk hero. The intrepid washerwoman becomes a fierce emblem of resistance during the Franco-Ottoman siege. She knocks out a standard-bearer with her battoir (laundry beater) and seizes the enemy flag, flipping the script on invasion. Even more audaciously, she exposes her bare backside to the janissaries in an act so shocking that they fled. Whether or not that really happened, the image of a single washerwoman defying invaders burns bright in local myth.
Having been the object of centuries of political ping-pong, something traumatizing happens in the early 18th century. At that time, Nice belongs to Victor Amadeus II of Savoy, Louis XIV’s enemy during the War of Spanish Succession, so after capturing the fortress in 1706, the Sun King had it demolished to ensure it could never be used against France again. The ruins that are left from this assault, is the stage that La Castellada is performed on.
The narrative then celebrates Giuseppe Garibaldi, the great Italian unification hero born in Nice in 1807. The performance recalls how his childhood home overlooking the port formed his love for the sea and a deep identification with the Mediterranean’s free-spirited culture, and his exploits that would take him to South America and Sicily. It nods to his daring military campaigns and stormy politics, and his equally fearless wife Anita, who rode into battle at his side and once escaped capture by plunging on horseback into a river. Their intertwined story reflects the turbulent era that saw Nice ceded from the Kingdom of Sardinia to France under Napoleon III, a political shift that Garibaldi, ever loyal to Italy, opposed fiercely.
But La Castellada doesn’t stop in the distant past. Les années folles swing Nice into the Jazz Age, when queens, tsars and movie stars turned it into Europe’s most glamorous playground, building the fairy-like Casino de la Jetée-Promenade, and establishing its reputation as one of the glittering jewels of the Côte d’Azur.
The final tableau returns to today, closing the circle. All this history becomes heritage, the raw material of Niçois identity. Nissa la bella – beautiful, defiant, eternal Nice.
After Dark on the Hill
The experience works because location and story merge completely. The Colline du Château becomes the protagonist. Every scene happens where history actually unfolded, ruins becoming characters in their own resurrection story. Lighting and sound elevate crumbling stone into storytelling characters. It is theatrical archaeology where imagination rebuilds what history has worn away.
La Castellada confirms that the most vivid history lessons come under the moonlight, when stones whisper their stories and a skilled theatre company gives them voice. It is rebellion, myth, grit, and emotion, all condensed into one unforgettable night on Castle Hill.
Plan Your Visit
- La Castellada is on every night through 19 August, starting at 9 pm.
- The performance, in French, lasts a little over two hours.
- Location: Upper plateau, near the snack stand.
- Regular admission €12, concessions and family rates available
- Pedestrians may climb via Montée Lesage from Quai Rauba Capeu.
- Drivers should take Montée Montfort. Parking is available at Allée Professeur Benoît but still involves a walk to the plateau.
- An ability to walk uphill and to stand for extended periods of time is required.
- Visitors with mobility needs can drive directly to the top, though the uneven terrain remains part of the site’s historical character.
- Dogs and strollers are not permitted.
Reserve your tickets online now!
CONTACT DETAILS
La Castellada
La Colline du Château
06300 Nice
All images courtesy and © Ville de Nice unless otherwise marked
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