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Top sports visits in Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur

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The Sud region is a land of sporting events and vibrates to the tune of the OM, RCT and the Tour de France matches. Go through the museum door, the gate to the stadium or the villages d’alpinisme, and enter the great history of sport.

Le Musée National du sport in Nice (National Sports Museum)

Get your fill of sports thrills

As symbols of legendary sports events, some objects have the power to take you to a ring or a ground and recreate the jubilation of a victory, and even sometimes the spleen of losing. At first glance. Dark red and slightly worn with time, Marcel Cerdan’s boxing gloves or the 1998 Blues shirt, exhibited at the Musée National du Sport in Nice, are among them. In the mythical Allianz Riviera stadium, which hosts the OGC Nice football club matches, the only national museum devoted to sport in France is home to some impressive collections: around 45,000 objects – and some of them date back to the 16th century! – and 400,000 documents. Archives, posters, trophies, memories of great champions and artworks dedicated to the sport show its values, its history and what it says about our societies through the centuries. Spectacular!

Le Musée de l’Olympique de Marseille (Stadium Tour)

The beating heart of the stade Vélodrome

The first notes of the hymn of the Olympique de Marseille echo around the Orange Vélodrome stadium. The impassioned crowd of supporters stands, brandishing thousands of blue scarves with the colours of its mythical club. It has been a deeply passionate love story between the people of Marseille and the OM, for more than 120 years. To visit the Musée de l’Olympique de Marseille (Stadium Tour) is to delve into the secrets of the iconic Marseille stadium which was inaugurated in 1937. The tour starts with the changing room, where legendary football players and players from the OM, including Jean-Pierre Papin or Basile Boli, lace up their football boots, in full concentration before entering the field. It continues along the edge of the pitch, and then the areas where, with an audioguide for a total immersion experience, you will hear original content and dozens of anecdotes about the club. And of course, the main trophies, the unforgettable 1993 Champions League one, that OM is the only French club to have won. Always the first!

La visite du stade Mayol de Toulon

Dans le temple du rugby toulonnais

Here, you might think you can hear the Pilou-Pilou, the legendary song of the supporters of the Rugby Club Toulonnais, even when it isn’t even a match day. The mythical temple of French rugby, the Stade Mayol in Toulon opens its doors for a guided tour. It will tell you everything about the eternal links which linked the singer Félix Mayol to the RCT, 3 times European champion and  4 times French champion of the Top 14. And will reveal behind the scenes at the stadium building – the only one located in the town centre and by the sea – before being inaugurated in 1920. Rugby fans will get a thrill when you visit the private boxes and the changing rooms, and when you listen to the passionate anecdotes that the guide tells you about the history of the place and the club. And by the way, do you know what a pilou is?

Mountaineering villages in the Southern Alps

A sports history of the conquest of the peaks

Just imagine. In front of you, the wildest and most majestic peaks of the French Southern Alps are silhouetted against an azure, cloudless sky. Under your boots with their crampons, shimmering ice with purple lights. The conquest of the mountains is engraved in the DNA of the Hautes-Alpes, a mountaineering mecca since the 19th century. To bring this great story alive, 7 villages in the Ecrins national Park – La Chapelle en Valgaudemar, Vallouise-Pelvoux, Le Casset, Villar d’Arène and La Grave have grouped together under the banner “Villages d’alpinisme”. Houses built of stone, chapels and fountains, street narrow streets… All these characterful places are historic gateways to the emblematic Alpine peaks and the Barre des Écrins. Through their culture, they will have you living the anecdotes told by the locals or the Musée Mémoires d’Alpinisme, the incredible adventure of the ice pioneers.

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