Limestone, Light and landscape around Nice

One of the things that becomes impossible to ignore travelling through southern France is that the landscape itself feels sculpted. The cliffs, terraces, folded hillsides and pale stone villages all seem tied together. The reason is geology.

Around Nice and much of Provence, the dominant rocks are ancient limestones formed in warm tropical seas roughly 70 to 200 million years ago, long before the Alps existed. What we are looking at now were once marine sediments slowly accumulating beneath shallow seas filled with shellfish, corals and ammonites.

Later, during the uplift of the Alps, these rocks were compressed, folded and lifted high above sea level. That is why the country feels so dramatic – steep valleys, tilted strata, cliffs and ridges all pushed upward and then carved by erosion.

The geology also explains the vegetation and agriculture. Limestone produces alkaline, fast-draining soils. Water disappears quickly. Plants have to survive drought, heat and reflected light from stone. That is why so much of the Mediterranean palette is silver, aromatic and tough – olives, thyme, rosemary, lavender and vines all evolved perfectly for these conditions.

It also explains why the gardens we have been visiting feel so connected to place. Designers here are not fighting the landscape. They are working with rock, drought, light and exposure. Even the colour palette of the buildings and villages seems to emerge naturally from the geology beneath them.

And then there is the food. The herbs, olives, grapes, tomatoes and eggplants of Mediterranean cooking are all part of the same system. You cannot really separate the cuisine from the limestone landscape that produces it.

Coming from Australia, especially from a landscape that is often older, flatter and more deeply weathered, the visible structure here is striking. The bones of the earth sit close to the surface. The geology is not hidden. It shapes everything.