Even on a tight schedule, Place Masséna earns the hours.
Allow 20–30 min.
Nice's grand crossroads — bold Italian-red arcades, a black-and-white checkerboard plaza and the Fontaine du Soleil — that works far better as a passage than a pause: by day it's a busy, sun-baked transit hub you cross rather than sit in. It transforms after dark, when Jaume Plensa's seven glowing 'seated men' on their poles flicker through colours overhead; that 15-minute night spectacle, not the daytime square, is the reason to make a point of being here.
Jaume Plensa's 'Conversation à Nice' (2007) — seven illuminated seated figures on tall poles representing the seven continents — change colour after dark above the tram line. · jaumeplensa.com
The seven figures, inspired by ancient scripts of antiquity, have become a symbol of the square and the city. · en.wikipedia.org