Tende

Tende is a commune in the Alpes-Maritimes department in southeastern France, lying inside Mercantour National Park in the French Alps. The mountainous commune is bordered by Italy to the north along a watershed line of mountain tops that holds more than twenty summits above 2,000 metres. A large rectangle of land running east to west, it is split from north to south by the valley of the Roya river, which the Refrei tributary joins within the commune. The Col de Tende, a strategic pass through the Alps to Piedmont, has been modernised as a road and railway tunnel. Tende was a populated place by the year 690 and has prehistoric rock engravings, displayed in the Musee des Merveilles or left in place. It passed between the counts of Ventimiglia, the counts of Provence, Savoy and Napoleonic France, belonged to Italy from 1861 to 1947, and was the last commune to join the French Republic, in 1947, after a local referendum.