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Roquebrune Cap Martin

Cote d'Azure
€3,800,000

Magnificent and recent Provincal style villa on the Cote d'Azur, set in more than half an acre of ground with large terraces, a swimming pool, summer kitchen and exceptional views of the sear and Cap Martin

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HENRI MATISSE, the Brush Drawings is an exhibition which runs until February 19 at the
Musée Départemental in Le Cateau-Cambrésis. It is part of a major programme run by the Nord-Pas de Calais Association of Museum Curators, bringing together 28 museums around the theme of drawing. As well as showing the brush-drawn work of Matisse, a section is devoted to his calligraphy in parallel with that of the Chinese.

BBC ACTIVE, market-leaders in language-learning resources, have launched Quickstart Apps in French, Spanish, German and Italian.The apps, which are now available in the App Store, offer an effective way to get to grips with the basics of a language so that users can communicate with confidence, fast.

Learners encounter essential everyday language within a storyline following three friends on a city break. The story is broken down into 14 episodes, presenting key language through conversations, an explanation of the grammar and culture, with a fully interactive section where learners can practise constructing sentences of their own and record them to compare with native speakers. Quizzes give feedback and the option to assess what you’ve learnt, and the recordable phrase book allows you to perfect your pronunciation.
Quickstart Apps can be used on the iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad and are available to download from the iTunes App Store, priced £5.99.

More info: www.bbcactive.com/quickstart.

COMMEMORATING the Titanic’s last Continental stop, when 281 passengers embarked at Cherbourg on April 10, 1912, the Manche port is staging a major exhibition this Spring – 100 years after the ship sank.

La Cité de la Mer will have a display of more than 2,000sq m about the history of emigration and the Titanic, under the title of ‘Titanic, Retour à Cherbourg’.

More info:
www.cherbourg-titanic.com

THE AREA OF the Causses-Cevennes has been added to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the category of cultural and living landscapes.

The Causses comes under four départements – Aveyron, Gard, Hérault and Lozère – and is a limestone plateau dissected by gorges and valleys. The razor-sharp ridges and deep valleys in the schists of the Cevennes owe their similarity to a unique, Mediterranean, agro-pastoral culture, dating back to prehistoric times and protected in recent years by sustainable development and modernisation.

Today the region is renowned for its products such as cheese (Roquefort for example) and meat sold under local quality labels. Architectural heritage is also important, including monuments and more modest agricultural buildings or markers that define the identity of
the whole region, among them Templar and Hospitaller boundaries, dew ponds, vaulted sheep houses and cellars that are still in use.

More info: www.causses-et-cevennes.com

NESTLED BETWEEN BURGUNDY and Switzerland, Franche-Comté is one of France’s smallest regions, an area of lush valleys, rushing water and the mountain landscapes of the Jura and southern Vosges. It’s the home of Peugeot and Pasteur, of absinthe and delicious Comté cheese, yet it remains one of the least well known regions to British travellers.

But all that could change with the opening of the new Rhine-Rhône TGV link on December 11. Running for 140km between Dijon and Mulhouse, the new link will cut 30 minutes off the journey time from Paris to Besançon and see an increase in the number of services from the capital from six to nine daily returns.

Two new stations have been built on the line – Besançon Franche-Comté TGV and Belfort Montbéliard TGV. The TGV service will now leave from Paris Gare de Lyon rather than Gare de l’Est, with a journey time to Besançon as little as 1 hour 59 minutes.
More info: www.raileurope.co.uk, www.franchcomte.org
By Gillian Thornton