Villefranche looking along the lower coast road toward the old town and the beach area. The name loosely means village with no tax as long ago the area was regularly raided by Turkish pirates who would plunder and carry off the villagers to slavery. Of course when the villagers saw the pirates coming they fled to the hills to avoid the carnage and started to live there permanently but the ruler of the area decided to entice them back by making the village a tax free area. They eventually came back and the pirating ceased due to a fort being built in the area for protection of the town (or so the story goes). The coastline toward Italy is quite rugged with high cliffs coming near to the water so there are 3 roads (corniches) along parts of this coast and the views from all roads are quite stunning as we found out on our trip to Menton with hills and tight bends all presenting differing views of the area.