Chances are if you are vacationing in the South of France, you will be flying into and out of the Nice airport, officially called Aeroport Nice Côte d’Azur. And from there you will likely be heading into central Nice (Centre-Ville) to spend some time in the Riviera’s lively urban hub or traveling on to one of the many other enchanting towns and villages along the Côte d’Azur.
If you are not renting a car–which is hopefully the case because public transportation is ridiculously easy and plentiful in the South of France–you may be wondering how to get to and from the airport. Fortunately, it’s easy using the region’s excellent public transportation system.
Here’s your ultimate guide on how to get to and from the Nice airport using public transportation written by someone who has done the trip many times and works in public transit.
Nice Côte d’Azur Airport Overview
The international airport in Nice is the second largest in France, but still feels small and easy to navigate. There are only two terminals–Terminal 1 and Terminal 2. I found this handy page on the airport website that shows which airlines fly into and out of each terminal, though you should be able to confirm your terminal assignment on your airline ticket.
You can travel between the two terminals quickly and easily by hopping on either Tram Line 2 or Tram Line 3 run by Lignes d’Azur. (There is a Tram Line 1 – more on that later.) These sleek, bright-red tram cars provide service between both airport terminals and the Grand Arénas stop, which connects to the Saint-Augustin SNCF rail station (Gare Saint-Augustin) and various destinations in Nice.
The trams start their runs at Terminal 2, followed by Terminal 1 and then Grand Arénas. From Terminal 2, the tram takes approximately nine minutes to get to Grand Arénas, and from the closer Terminal 1, it takes about five minutes. They run seven days a week from about 4 a.m. until the last flight at approximately 1:30 a.m. During peak hours on weekdays, frequency is roughly every eight to nine minutes, every nine to ten minutes on Saturdays and every 12 to 15 minutes on Sundays.
There are also free, electric shuttle buses that connect Terminal 1 and Terminal 2 to the car parks that are further away. These run every 15 minutes from 4:30 a.m. until the last flight at approximately 1:30 a.m.
NOTE: It is FREE to take the tram between either airport terminal and the Grand Arénas stop (with connection to Gare Saint-Augustin); however, if you are riding the trams anywhere else, you will need to purchase a Lignes d’Azur ticket, which I will talk about in more detail below.
Getting from the Airport to Nice Centre-Ville
If you are going straight from the airport to the center of Nice, there are two main ways to get there, both taking about half an hour:
Tram Line 2
From either airport terminal, take Tram Line 2 in the Port Lympia direction. If you are staying in or near the port, you would simply stay on this tram. Otherwise, most people get off at the Jean Médecin stop and potentially walk to wherever you need to go or connect to Tram Line 1 for travel to various points of interest in the city.
Going in the direction Hôpital Pasteur on Tram Line 1 takes you closer to the Promenade des Anglais. The tram stops at Place Masséna in the heart of Nice, as well as Opéra and Cathédrale, which are the two stops for Old Town Nice, often referred to as Vieux Nice or Vieille-Ville.
Tram Line 1 also serves the city’s main bus station (Gare Routière) at the Vauban stop. This is where you might catch a bus to visit towns outside of Nice, such as Èze-Village. (You can read more about how to travel to Èze-Village here.)
Depending on where you’re staying, you may also want to stay on Tram Line 2 and take it to the Garibaldi stop, which is a lovely square on the northern edge of Vieux Nice and not far from Tram Line 1’s Opéra and Cathédrale stops.
NOTE: If you are taking Tram Line 2 to the airport from Nice, be aware that at the Grand Arénas stop, the line branches in two directions–Nice Airport and CADAM. When boarding the tram, you must board the one marked Airport if that’s where you’re going, or CADAM if your destination is the Administrative Centre.
What about Tram Line 3?
Tram Line 3 from the airport connects to the Saint-Isidore district of Nice and serves Allianz Riviera Stadium, which would be of interest to anyone attending a sporting event or concert. It runs approximately every 15 minutes on weekdays but does not stop at the airport when there are events going on.
Bus 12
I am as big a fan of buses as I am of trains, and Lignes d’Azur’s bus 12 (toward Palais des Expositions) provides service between Terminal 1 (Aéroport/Promenade stop) and Nice. Stops in Nice include the Promenade des Anglais, Place Masséna and Vieux Nice. Bus 12 runs daily every 10 to 25 minutes. It takes a little under half an hour to get to the Promenade.
Connecting to SNCF Trains for Travel Beyond Nice
If you are staying in one of the many other beautiful towns along the Côte d’Azur and going there directly from the airport, your best bet is to take Tram Line 2 or Tram Line 3 directly from the airport terminal to the nearby SNCF Gare Saint-Augustin, which is at Lignes d’Azur’s Grand Arénas stop.
Remember, there is no charge for taking either tram to Grand Arénas, and travel time between the two terminals and Grand Arénas is five to ten minutes depending on which terminal you are at. Terminal 1 is closer to the Grand Arénas stop and takes roughly five minutes by tram. Terminal 2 takes closer to 10 minutes.
If you don’t have a lot of luggage, you could also walk between the airport and train station; from Terminal 1, the walk is about 12 minutes, but from Terminal 2, which is further away, the walk is closer to 20 minutes.
At Gare Saint-Augustin you can catch trains to many wonderful destinations in the South of France–for example, Villefranche-sur-Mer, Monaco or Menton to the east of Nice. For these destinations, you would take the train toward Ventimiglia, Italy (Ventimille in French). Located right over the border, this is the train’s easternmost station and where you connect to the Italian rail system. As a point of reference, the travel time between Nice-Ville and Ventimille is about 50 minutes. The train ride to Villefranche-sur-Mer takes less than 10 minutes.
If you’re headed west of Nice to places like Antibes, Juan-les-Pins or Cannes, you take the train toward Grasse or Cannes. You can also travel as far west as Marseille with a connection. Travel time to Cannes is a little more than half an hour.
Visit www.sncf.com/en for complete routes, schedules and fares.
Getting to Gare Nice-Ville (a.k.a Gare Thiers)
You may be wondering why I am not recommending you go to Nice’s main train station, Gare Nice-Ville, also called Gare Thiers, for the rail connections described above. Two reasons: 1) It’s easier and more direct to get to Gare Saint-Augustin, and 2) It’s free; no fare is required for tram service between the airport and Grand Arénas, which is where you connect to Gare Saint-Augustin. I will also add that Gare Nice-Ville, while beautiful and grandiose on the outside, can be chaotic and not very user friendly once you’re inside, especially during the busy summer months.
That said, in case you want to know how to get to Gare Nice-Ville from the airport, here are your two options.
Tram Line 1 + Short Walk
Take Tram Line 2 to the Jean Médecin stop in Nice. From the Jean Médecin stop, you can walk about 10 minutes along Avenue Jean Médecin and turn left on Avenue Thiers. The station is on your right–just follow everyone with luggage!
Tram Line 2 + Tram Line 1
After getting off Tram Line 2 at Jean Médecin, you can hop on Tram Line 1 that I mentioned earlier but in the direction Henri Sappia. Go one stop to Gare Thiers, which is on the corner of Avenue Jean Médecin and Avenue Thiers. From here, it’s just a few minutes to the station entrance. You can use the same tram ticket you used on Tram Line 2 from the airport as long as your transfer to Tram Line 1 happens within 74 minutes.
Note: At the time of this writing Gare Nice-Ville was undergoing renovations, so walking from the tram to the entrance may be shorter and easier when that work is complete.
Bus Service Between Nice Airport and Towns Outside of Nice
Embracing buses as well as trains presents many more interesting travel adventures and can make it easier to get off the beaten path if you wish.
I already mentioned that Lignes d’Azur bus 12 provides service from the airport to Nice Centre-Ville. Many other bus routes–some operated by Lignes d’Azur and others by the regional transportation network, ZOU!–are also available at the airport to get you to popular destinations throughout the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region. These include the area’s charming hilltop villages, like Èze-Village and Saint-Paul-de-Vence. (Read my post about the different ways to get to Èze-Village.)
Buses depart from the Aéroport/Promenade stop located in front of Terminal 1. Well marked with their destination towns, they are hard to miss. If you are at Terminal 2, you can either walk to Terminal 1 or take one of the trams for free.
Purchasing Tickets for Buses, Trams and Trains
Chances are if you are arriving at the Nice Airport you will have to buy either a Lignes d’Azur ticket for travel directly from the airport into Nice, or you will take the tram for free to the Grand Arénas stop and connect there to Gare Saint-Augustin for rail travel to your final destination. At that point, you will need to buy a train ticket.
The following two sections provide information on buying tickets for Lignes d’Azur’s trams and buses, as well as SNCF rail tickets.
NOTE: If you you are taking a ZOU! bus from the airport, you will be able to pay the fare directly to the bus driver. The basic one-way fare is €2.10 at the time of this writing; however, there are discounts available for multiple rides and for mini groups. You can see the fares that went into effect in January 2023 here.
Lignes d’Azur Tickets
On July 1, 2023, Lignes d’Azur introduced a completely new fare payment system that in my opinion is unnecessarily complicated and makes getting to and from the airport especially expensive for tourists. You can read my detailed blog post about the Lignes d’Azur fare overhaul here, but in a nutshell, they did away with their longstanding paper tickets in favor of reloadable cards that you validate each time you board a vehicle.
They also updated fares, increasing their regular one-way fare from €1.50 to €1.70, and introduced a new mobile app called Lignes d’Azur Tickets for purchasing fares. The Tickets app replaces the previous ticketing app called Nice Tickets and accompanies a separate trip planning app called Lignes d’Azur Mobile, which is where you’ll find routes and schedules. If you plan to take public transit a lot in Nice, I recommend you download both apps.
Remember, if you need to go to Gare Saint-Augustin to catch a train, all you need to do is hop on any tram from either terminal and travel one stop to Grand Arénas. No fare is required for this trip, and you can skip below to the next section to find out how to buy rail tickets.
But, what if you need to take the tram to Nice? In this case, your primary option is to purchase a “special” round-trip Airport Ticket, or Carte Aero, for €10. For some reason, the reloadable cards are not available at the airport, which means you don’t have a way to purchase a regular fare ticket for your trip. Instead, you have to pay €10 for a round-trip ticket even if you have no intention of returning to the airport. You’re also technically over paying by €6.60 given that two trips should only cost €3.40 based on the regular €1.70 one-way fare. Frankly, this sounds like a scam to get more money out of tourists. Fortunately, there are ways around it.
- If you happen to have a reloadable card already (say from a previous trip to Nice), you can use the Tickets app to add regular fare value in advance. (I am not sure if you can use the ticket kiosk at the airport to add regular fare to your card, which is why I recommend using the app to add fare in advance.)
- Assuming you don’t have a reloadable card, you can avoid buying the Airport Ticket by taking either tram for free one stop to Grand Arénas and buying a reloadable card there. Of course this means you have to get off the tram, buy the card and then get on the train again, which may be a pain if you have a lot of luggage.
- If you have an Android phone and have activated Near Field Communications (NFC), you technically don’t need the card and can use your phone directly to buy and validate a regular fare ticket. (I am not sure when or if this feature will be available on IOS for iPhone users.)
SNCF Train Tickets
SNCF is the French national railway company, and trains in the South of France are operated in partnership with regional governments under the sub-brand Trains Express Régional (TER). Fares are based on the origin and destination of travel. A wide variety of discount passes are available, including a Tourist Pass that is good throughout the summer months of June, July, August and September, and the Blue Coast Pass that offers one low price for unlimited travel by TER for a whole day.
You can find information and purchase tickets on the Sud Provence Alpes Côte d’Azur (PACA for short) website, or if you’ll be traveling often by train, I recommend you download and purchase your tickets via the SNCF Connect app. This is the most convenient way to buy tickets in my opinion. It avoids having to buy tickets last-minute at a station kiosk, which can be a major hassle, especially during the crowded summer season.
TIP: Be sure to have your ticket on you or on your phone to present to the controller if asked. While it may seem that there are often no controllers on board to check tickets, if they are and ask for your ticket, they have no problem imposing a steep fine if you do not have a ticket (or even the right kind of ticket). SNCF is serious about enforcing payment on trains (as they should), so consider yourself warned!