Monument perceived by tourists in Nice, shiny, with some surprise. But this city has a prosperous and harsh military history which has absorbed many lives.

The monument was erected in 1928 in memory of the four thousand inhabitants of Nice who died on the battlefields of the First World War. The project has created local architect Roger Sissal decorating cenotaph high reliefs carved by sculptor Alfred Zhannio. The place for the monument chosen so as to be clearly visible and the sea, and the envelope of the Castle hill embankment. The opening was attended by the hero of the First World Marshal Foch and the British, American, Italian sailors whose warships were in the bay of Villefranche.

The monument is designed as a cut in the rock colossal arch, which is inscribed the likeness adorned the temple colonnade. Outlines it resembles a funeral urn. High relief at the foot symbolizes war, peace, freedom and power. On the monument engraved with the names of the inhabitants of Nice who died in the war of 1914-1918.

When the First World War took place in front of a thousand kilometers from Nice, then during WWII she became front: the city was occupied by the troops of fascist Italy. Here a resistance which began with the high school students of the Lyceum of the city (now - the high school weight). All of them were arrested in 1940 and then shot.

Until September 1943 felt relatively safe in Nice Jews who had fled from Paris: Mussolini, Hitler's irritation, refused to expose them to reprisals. But as Italy signed an armistice with the Allies, the German tanks appeared on the Promenade des Anglais. Gestapo headquarters located in hotel "Splendid" in the Boulevard Victor Hugo. Here, in hotel rooms, torture chambers were built. The Gestapo and the Vichy police began rounding up the Jews, thousands of them were sent to concentration camps. In the spring and summer of 1944 the city was bombed by the US, of which killed about one thousand residents, more than five thousand were left homeless, famine. By the time of the liberation of the city's population has decreased by 15 percent, economic life has been completely destroyed.

The names of the victims of World War II as a monument carved on the stelae. In the future, the idea of ​​the monument is progressing, covering all the new military conflicts, falls to the French people. There stele with the names of the inhabitants of Nice who died in the bloody colonial wars waged by the country: in 1946 - 1954 years in Indochina (Vietnam) in 1954 - 1962 in Algiers. Gradually, the monument was interpreted as a monument to those who died in all the wars of the XX century.

It is thought that this memorial - one of the most original and impressive in all of France, and its huge size (32 meters high) express the idea of ​​the eternal memory of the citizens of Nice, who gave their lives for their country.