AA-2026-C907F2
On the image
Seen from the deck of something — a ferry, a pleasure cruiser, the kind of vessel that in the 1960s carried tourists who had decided that the Mediterranean was best appreciated from the middle of it — a resort town spreads along a sandy shore backed by wooded hills. The postwar apartment blocks going up along the waterfront are the architectural signature of a boom that was reshaping every Riviera town that could plausibly describe itself as a destination, the theory being that more rooms meant more visitors, and that more visitors meant prosperity, and that nobody would mind the buildings.
The long pale beach between water and tree line is the real subject, the thing the person with the camera was actually trying to capture: the promise of it, the width of it, the way it reads as abundance from a distance. French and Italian Riviera towns in this decade were in the business of selling exactly that view — the bay, the hills, the suggestion of ease — to a Northern European tourist market that had recently discovered package holidays and was spending its new disposable income with great seriousness.
The hills behind the town still carry more trees than buildings, which means this was taken before the construction wave crested. Within a decade, the balance would shift, and a shot from the same spot would look considerably less picturesque.
Visually related — by likeness
Mediterranean Coastal Town from the Water, French Riviera, 1960s. 1960–1969. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-C907F2. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/mediterranean-coastal-town-from-the-water-french-riviera-1960s.
@misc{aaAA2026C907F2,
title = {Mediterranean Coastal Town from the Water, French Riviera, 1960s},
year = {1960–1969},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-C907F2},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/mediterranean-coastal-town-from-the-water-french-riviera-1960s}
}TY - ART TI - Mediterranean Coastal Town from the Water, French Riviera, 1960s PY - 1960–1969 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-C907F2 UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/mediterranean-coastal-town-from-the-water-french-riviera-1960s ER -
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