Walk along Rue de la Préfecture in Nice today and it is easy to miss the small plaque above number 23. Around you, Vieux-Nice is performing its familiar Mediterranean theatre: restaurant terraces, shutters thrown open above narrow streets, voices bouncing between ochre façades.
Yet behind this address lies one of the Côte d’Azur’s most extraordinary stories.
On 27 May 1840, Niccolò Paganini — perhaps the most famous violin virtuoso of the nineteenth century — died here. What followed was stranger than many of the legends created during his lifetime. His body was refused burial in consecrated ground, embalmed, moved from place to place and, according to a persistent Niçois tradition, at one point concealed inside an olive-oil vat on a property belonging to his friend.
The man accused of having made a pact with the Devil could not find a grave.
And Nice became the setting for the final act of the Paganini legend.
The Devil’s Violinist Arrives in Nice
By 1840, the great virtuoso was already becoming a ghost of himself
Paganini had been born in Genoa on 27 October 1782 and transformed violin playing across Europe. His technical feats seemed almost physically impossible to contemporary audiences. His thin figure, long hair, intense appearance and theatrical manner only encouraged rumours that supernatural forces were involved.
His reputation became inseparable from the nickname later attached to him: “the Devil’s Violinist.”
By the late 1830s, however, the spectacular performer was seriously ill. His health had deteriorated, his voice was gone, and his public career was effectively finished. After periods in Paris and Marseille, he came to Nice, then part of the Kingdom of Sardinia, not France.
Here, his friend Count Hilarion de Cessole, a member of an influential Niçois family, assisted him. Paganini spent his final period at what is now 23 Rue de la Préfecture, in the heart of the old town.
He died there on 27 May 1840, aged 57.
A Death Without the Last Rites
One decision transformed an ordinary burial into a years-long affair
Shortly before Paganini’s death, a priest had been sent to him to administer the final sacraments. According to accounts of the episode, Paganini did not believe death was imminent and did not receive them at that moment.
He died before the rites could subsequently be performed.
This became crucial.
The Bishop of Nice, Dominique Galvano, who headed the diocese from 1833 to 1855, refused permission for Paganini to be buried in consecrated ground. Galvano was a formidable administrator and a strict defender of ecclesiastical authority.
Paganini’s notorious public image made the situation even more explosive.
His family and friends argued that he had remained a Catholic. His will itself contained provisions for masses to be celebrated for his soul. Nevertheless, the burial dispute continued through ecclesiastical and legal channels.
The irony
The musician whom Europe suspected of supernatural powers had left instructions concerning the salvation of his soul — yet after death, the mythology surrounding him helped make an ordinary Catholic burial almost impossible.
The Olive-Oil Vat
Where documented history meets one of Nice’s darkest legends
This is where the story becomes particularly Niçois.
Local tradition says that Count de Cessole had Paganini’s body embalmed and, fearing desecration or public scandal, arranged for it to be removed.
According to a version of the story preserved in later local accounts, the corpse was hidden on a property near the Lazaret of Villefranche-sur-Mer, concealed in an olive-oil vat.
Did Paganini’s embalmed corpse literally spend time inside a reservoir once used for olive oil?
We should be careful.
Early nineteenth-century accounts firmly confirm the refusal of burial, embalming and subsequent removal of the body. They do not all mention the olive-oil vat. One early account says the body remained in a room of a Nice hospital before being transported via the lazaretto of Villefranche. Other later traditions place it successively at properties connected with Cessole, Cap Ferrat and Villefranche.
So the oil-vat episode should be treated as a powerful local tradition attached to a well-documented historical scandal, rather than as a detail that can be proven beyond doubt.
For me, that distinction makes the story even better.
During a tour, I often explain that the most fascinating Riviera legends are not necessarily inventions. They tend to grow around a small core of extraordinary reality — and Paganini’s corpse already had an extraordinary enough journey without any embellishment.
From Nice to Villefranche — and Still No Grave
Paganini’s journey after death lasted far longer than anyone expected
The dispute did not end in Nice.
His embalmed remains passed through several locations while ecclesiastical permission was debated. Contemporary and later sources differ slightly on the exact chronology, but agree on the essential point: Paganini remained unburied for an extraordinary period.
Eventually the remains returned toward Italy. The affair continued for years, involving Church authorities and appeals concerning his right to a Catholic burial.
The story was so unusual that an important new scholarly volume, L’Affaire Paganini: La vicenda post-mortem, published in 2025, assembled previously unpublished documents from archives in Genoa, Parma, Turin and Nice specifically to reconstruct what happened after the violinist’s death.
Paganini’s remains ultimately found their permanent resting place in Parma’s Cimitero Monumentale della Villetta.
What You Can See in Nice Today
The story survives behind one discreet façade
Return to 23 Rue de la Préfecture and look upward.
There is no grand Paganini museum here. No monumental entrance announces what happened inside. Instead, a commemorative plaque on the façade marks the house associated with his final days.
The City of Nice itself includes the address among the city’s unusual historical places and identifies it as the house where Paganini died.
That modesty is part of its charm.
Many guests are surprised when I point out the building because it is exactly the kind of place you can pass ten times without imagining what happened behind its shutters.
From here, the geography of the story opens outward: Vieux-Nice, the old ecclesiastical world surrounding Sainte-Réparate, the coast toward Villefranche and Cap Ferrat, and beyond the Mediterranean, Paganini’s native Genoa.
For an official local reference, the City of Nice also documents the address among the city’s unusual historical sites.
When to Visit
Come when Vieux-Nice is quiet enough to look upward
The best moment to see 23 Rue de la Préfecture is in the early morning, before the old town becomes crowded, or in the late afternoon when the façades catch warmer Mediterranean light.
Do not expect a conventional attraction.
The pleasure lies precisely in standing in an ordinary Niçois street and suddenly understanding that one of Europe’s most famous musicians died only a few metres above you — and that his death triggered a dispute involving a bishop, aristocrats, courts, rumours of the Devil and, perhaps, an olive-oil vat hidden somewhere along the Côte d’Azur.
That is the Riviera I find most interesting: not simply beaches, palaces and panoramic viewpoints, but layers of history concealed behind doors that almost nobody notices.
Paganini came to Nice seeking relief during the last stage of his illness. Instead, the city gave him one final legend.
And remarkably, it began only after he stopped playing.
If you would like to discover even more unexpected stories of Nice and the French Riviera, see places that rarely appear on standard itineraries, and connect them into a richer historical picture, we invite you to join one of our private tours.
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