Once upon a time, someone looked at this isolated pile of rock and shrubbery and thought, "What a wonderful place to build a village!"Thousands of years later, Saorge clings tenaciously to its mountain in the Roya Valley, defying reason and, from some angles, gravity.
The yellow building perched precariously above the olive trees is -- to no one's alarm but my own -- a primary school.
Saorge is only one of many stops along the train line that runs northwest from Nice to Tende, the last stop in Provence before the border.
Of course it hasn't been that long since this entire area was past the border. Most of this corner of France was annexed from the Italian Dukes of Savoie in 1860, but Tende only became French in 1947.
1947!
This detail of history explains many things.
It explains the omnipresence of Italian names in the hilltop graveyard.
It explains the trenitalia train that took us a few stops towards Ventimiglia.
It explains the delicious fresh mozzarella, tomato and basil sandwiches we picked up at the bakery for lunch.
Maybe even the vespacar?More of TSL's photos here.
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