The festival was founded in 1949 and plays on the black-and-white pebble mosaic of the parvis in front of the Basilique Saint-Michel-Archange, a baroque church at the top of Menton's old town with the Mediterranean directly below. The repertoire is chamber music and recital work, and the venue seats only a few hundred, which has kept the character intimate and the artists serious.
No attendance figure is published, and at this scale the number would not be the point.
Menton in high summer is a busy Riviera town, but the festival audience is small, older and largely local or returning, so tickets are obtainable later than for the big names elsewhere on the coast.
The practical note is the climb: the parvis is reached by stepped ramps through the old town, and there is no vehicle access. Concerts start after dark and the stone retains the day's heat.
PlanningA short window of individual evening concerts; the open-air venue holds only a few hundred.