Nice Observatory

Nice Observatory crowns the summit of Mount Gros above Nice, France, where a banker's ambition and some of the era's finest architects and engineers combined to build one of the great observatories of the nineteenth century.

About Nice Observatory

Founded in 1879 by the banker Raphaël Bischoffsheim, the observatory was designed by architect Charles Garnier, with its main dome engineered by Gustave Eiffel. It sits at 372 metres above sea level on Mount Gros, overlooking the city and the Mediterranean.

History

In 1886 the observatory unveiled the Grand Lunette, at the time the largest refracting telescope in the world, cementing Nice's place among Europe's leading centres for astronomy.

Telescopes & research

The historic Mont-Gros site is now one base of the Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur, alongside the Valrose campus, the CNRS campus at Sophia Antipolis and the Calern plateau. Current research spans astrophysics, geophysics and gravitational waves.

Location & getting there

Nice Observatory sits atop Mount Gros in Nice, on France's Côte d'Azur, at an elevation of 372 metres.

Visiting Nice Observatory

The Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur publishes current visiting and tour information on its official website; it's worth checking hours and any booking requirements before planning a trip up Mount Gros.

See your named star from here

Nice Observatory once hosted the world's largest refracting telescope, and its heritage domes are a fitting place to think about the night sky. A star named through Star Register has an exact right ascension and declination that a telescope here, or almost anywhere, can be pointed toward; look up the coordinates in our catalogue or start with our naming packages.