Menton

Menton is a resort town and commune in the Alpes-Maritimes department of the Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur region, on the French Riviera close to the Italian border. It has long been a frontier town, lying since the end of the 14th century between the County of Nice, held by the Duke of Savoy, and the Republic of Genoa. It was an exclave of the Principality of Monaco until the disputed plebiscite of 1860 added it to France. The town is a fashionable tourist centre with grand mansions and gardens, and its temperate Mediterranean climate favours the citrus industry with which it is strongly identified. In the nineteenth century a book by the English doctor James Henry Bennett made it a destination for sufferers of tuberculosis, and by the end of that century tourism was central to its growth.