Parc Phœnix — Attraction in Nice

SUMMARY: Great place to take kids, especially small ones. Awful place for most adults, albeit with lots of really interesting plants.

It consists of a huge greenhouse and an outdoor space. The greenhouse, which is divided into several zones, houses exotic plants and trees, plus reptiles, insects and flamingos. The outside area has more plants, and a small farm/zoo-like area with various mammals. Its situated just a busy road away from Nice airport, so aircraft engine noise is a constant. It claims 2,500 plant species and 2,000 animals, but at a guess about 1,950 of the animals must be insects.

It’s a really strange place. First the bad news: it is mostly made up of grotty, poorly-maintained buildings and enclosures. It’s depressing. Badly signposted (no, make that signposting “terribly bad”), unclean in places (some of the benches you would not want to sit on), dingy almost everywhere. It’s like a tiny Disneyland resort that has been running for years on 1% of the budget it really needs. The vast majority of the plants are unlabelled, the different zones of the place are named in a totally unhelpful way, and this makes it difficult to navigate. My tastes will differ from yours no doubt, but I found the plants more interesting than the animals (despite that lack of labelling); the animals were in dirty, sad enclosures and cages. Most of the larger animals (mammals and reptiles) were lonely singles; I felt especially sorry for the poor porcupine, solitary in its small ill-kept enclosure full of drying dying weeds.

There is a snack bar. If you can get past its unnecessarily aggressive signs telling you not to drink or eat your own supplies, it’s OK.

And there is a new-ish, rather random-seeming, climbing experience place called “Accrobranche” (don’t worry, that is not a French word you don’t know, it is a made-up and never-explained name) with climbing walls, zipwires and so on. The website cleverly conceals the fact that you have to pay extra to use it – more than the cost of admission into the Parc itself! Mind you, that may be irrelevant as (a) most of its signs do not point you to the entrance so it is tricky to find (its signs are all typically aggressive signs forbidding entrance and denying use to in various ways rather than indicating the way in!) and (b) on the day I went it was closed because… the weather was too hot!

Top tip: Accrobranche has a grotty tiny sign saying “BASKETS OBLIGATOIRE” (which means TRAINERS are COMPULSORY, so if you are wearing climbing shoes, walking shoes, closed sandals, or any other sort of footwear, you’re out of luck.

Kids, especially little ones, won’t care about any of these problems. They’ll probably be enthralled by the marmosets, the lemurs, the sad old porcupine, the pigs, small crocodile, snakes and iguanas. The flock of beautiful pink flamingos and the colourful carp will be a highlight, and the insectarium is surprisingly interesting if you take the time to actually find the insects in their unkempt habitats and to read the (French only) curatorial notes. Some children will even be impressed by some of the tropical trees and exotic flowers if you point them out (smaller children especially will just walk past without noticing if you don’t invite them to look). The trees and plants are truly glorious, despite their environment.

So, I’ll probably go back in a couple of years, for the kids to see it again. But I won’t enjoy it.

EDIT, July 2025. 11 months on from my review, it hasn't changed much. Still a fantastic idea, badly maintained. Ooh, and the number of animals might now have risen from 2,000 to 2,001, as our 8-year-old spent most of our lunchtime enthusing about a rat she saw...

For what it is; a very small zoo with a smallish botanical garden, it's OK. It could do with a little bit more care though. The glass viewing areas on the enclosures really were so grubby you could barely see the animals at times. The lake and fountain are great. Very attractive although the architecturally designed museum on it was closed the day we were there. There were no notices before we paid to get in and no-one taking the money informed us. We weren't bothered as we didn't find that very interesting but had we wanted to see it specifically I'm sure we'd have been disappointed.

Loved the glasshouse with the wonderful tropical plants although some of the sections were simply completely dead.

There were some really interesting animals, flamingoes, parrots, caymen, lots of carp, it was great fun too, watching the large collection of the fastest tortoises we'd ever seen! There were snakes and various insects as well as some small farm animals. They do claim to have 2,000 animals but probably most of them are fish and insects.

We did have a laugh though when I was looking in a terrarium and couldn't for the life of me see anything. I was there for ages until my partner told me that the sign on it in French said "this display is empty"! Perhaps, as there are lots of English speakers visiting it might be worth writing things like that in English underneath but hey, it's France and we're visitors so why should they? Gave us a laugh anyway.

Entry fee is very cheap and it's well worth the money. We had a lovely, relaxed few hours here but it does need a little more thorough...

An absolute robbery! I had fond memories of me going there as a child and wanted to take my own kids this time for them to experience what I did some 30+ years ago, but it was ruined by their incompetence!!

We first went there on Dec 22 and entered the park at 3pm. At 3.10pm an announcement was made for everyone to leave as the park was closing due to strong winds. The wind had been blowing for some time so why did they let us enter if it was to close it 10mins later. When I asked for a refund, I was told the staff onsite wasn’t authorised to provide a refund and I should contact La Marie de Nice directly. I did so but as they were slow to respond, we decided to try our chances again on Dec 24. I explained the situation at the door but the staff refused to let us in without paying a new set of ticket. As we were there already, I had no choice but to pay again for another set of tickets. Meanwhile still no response from La Mairie de Nice… The park itself is almost exactly the same as when I was a child (without butterflies though) but it’s badly maintained. Everything feels old, dirty.

On the plus side, it’s nice to have a vast space of greenery inside the city and the fact they have a variety of animals scattered around the park makes it a nice day out overall.

Today Dec 31, I received a response from La Mairie de Nice apologising for the inconvenience whilst being unable to refund me and are offering me a free entrance next time. Well I don’t live in Nice so that’s no good for me. I am now disputing the charge...