Victorine Studios in Nice: 100 years of cinema, new build
On the western side of Nice, away from the sea, stand the white gates bearing the inscription Studios de la Victorine. From here French cinema has reached the world for more than a hundred years: “Children of Paradise” and “Day for Night” were filmed here, and now the site is being prepared for a redevelopment costing €37 million, with initial works starting in 2026.
Seven hectares for cinema, 1919
The studio was founded in 1919 by producers Louis Nalpas and Serge Sandberg: they bought the estate that once belonged to the family of Victor Masséna and gave the land over for filming. Seven hectares near the hills and the sea were almost ideal for cinema of that era — any kind of location within an hour’s drive, and winter light that Paris does not have.
Rex Ingram and the Roaring Twenties
From 1924 to 1930 the studio was run by director Rex Ingram, and under him the Victorine was called the outstanding film centre of Europe. He completed the soundstages and installed a 5,000-amp generator — a private power supply for filming lights, a luxury at the time. Here Ingram shot Mare Nostrum (1926), and in 1928 the young Alfred Hitchcock worked on the lot — his Easy Virtue was filmed in part at the Victorine.
From “Children of Paradise” to “Day for Night”
The war years produced the studio’s major films. Marcel Carné shot The Night Visitors (1942) and Children of Paradise — filming took place in 1943, the film was released in 1945. In the same year Jean Delannoy worked at the Victorine on The Eternal Return.
Further down the list are Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief (1955), And God Created Woman (1956), Jacques Tati’s My Uncle (1958), The Sicilian Clan (1969). And in 1973 François Truffaut released Day for Night — a film about a film crew shooting a movie at the Victorine. The studio played itself, and the picture won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
Then began a long sequence of ups and downs: in 1982–1983 the studio was even closed. At the end of the 1990s the site was taken over by Euro Média, which, due to rights to the name, renamed it Studios Riviera.
Eleven soundstages and a hundred projects a year
Today the site has eleven soundstages — from 275 to 1,175 m², with heights from 5.5 to 12 metres. In 2017 the city of Nice resumed management and with it the historic name. From 1 September 2024 the studio was granted on a 35-year concession to the company Color, which specialises in special effects and post‑production, together with the Nice Côte d’Azur Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The site is not idle: in 2023 around a hundred projects and 160 shooting days took place here, writes Invest in Côte d’Azur.
Redevelopment costing €37 million
The redevelopment project is estimated at €37 million. On the seven hectares there will be a campus housing the ISART, e‑art Sup’ and ESRA schools, workshops for set construction and a fablab, offices for industry companies — they expect roughly sixty resident businesses. Villa Rex remains the site’s landmark, and the restructuring is being designed by the Février Carré firm. Works start in 2026 and will stretch over several years, with filming at the studio continuing. “We want the village spirit to be preserved,” says Color founder David Danesi in an interview with Nice Presse; the new Victorine intends to distinguish itself with a fablab and on‑site set production, without waiting for contractors.
Where visitors can go
The Victorine is a working studio; there are no public tours. However, from 2 October to 18 December 2026 a free exhibition “Alpes‑Maritimes, a land of filming” is open at the departmental archive (147 bd du Mercantour, Nice): photographs by Paul Louis, Mario Marquet and Vincent Gargano, location shooting versus studio work, and a separate feature — the Victorine itself. The archive is open Monday to Friday from 09:00 to 17:00.
Films are still being shot in the city: filming of the prequel to ‘Ocean’s Friends’ is taking place in Nice this autumn. About how the Cannes studio Riviera Film reached the Venice Film Festival we wrote separately, and about how the Riviera’s fame began among filmmakers and writers — in the piece on Fitzgerald’s legacy. The history of the studio itself is set out in detail in the archive on franceinfo.
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Photo: Jpchevreau / Wikimedia Commons