The Palais des Festivals et des Congrès in Cannes is the same one that millions of people around the world see in reports about the famous Cannes Film Festival. For this reason, the palace is worth seeing, although it may not make much of an impression on a weekday.
Its history is inextricably linked to the history of the festival itself. In the late thirties of the twentieth century, French cultural figures were outraged by the blatant interference of Mussolini and Goebbels in the organisation of the Venice Film Festival. Film critic Emile Villermo and writer and actor René Jeanne proposed to the Minister of Education in the government of the Popular Front Jean Zayu to organise a world film festival in France. The idea was supported by the Americans and the British, who boycotted the Venice screening.
The great Louis Lumière agreed to be the president of the first festival. The Americans, who had just released the film "Quasimodo", promised to erect an exact replica of Notre Dame de Paris on Cannes beach. But on September 1, 1939, the opening day, Nazi Germany invaded Poland, war broke out, and the festivities were cancelled.
The first Cannes Film Festival was held shortly after the end of the war, in 1946. In 1949, the city municipality built a special palace on the Croisette for the film festival, but it gradually became too small (in place of the "Croisette Palace" is now the Marriott Cannes Hotel). And in 1982 the festival got a new home - where there used to be a municipal casino, at the beginning of the Croisette, not far from the old harbour. It is this palace is now known to all TV viewers as the venue of the world's largest film festival.
Films by Fellini, Bergman, Antonioni, Vaida, Bunuel, Kurosawa have found worldwide recognition here. But not only the prestigious "Palme d'Or" made the festival famous: in 1955, Prince Rainier of Monaco met American actress Grace Kelly at the festival. A year later they married, and the current ruler of the principality, Albert II, is their son.
The building is huge: 35,000 square metres. However, its aesthetic merits are debatable, it looks like a palace of congresses during the socialist era: a lot of concrete and glass (citizens from time to time even suggest rebuilding the "bunker"). A wide "staircase of success" leads to the front entrance. On festival days, a red carpet is laid out in front of it, where stars are photographed. On normal days, tourists take pictures of each other on the stairs. Along the façade runs the Alley of Stars, its pavement is lined with tiles with the palm prints of famous actors and directors.
Inside, the building is impressive: it is full of modern equipment, with excellent light and acoustics. From the upper floors and terraces there are marvellous views of the old town, the harbour, the Croisette and the Lerins Islands. The palace hosts exhibitions, conferences and congresses, international festivals: advertising ("Cannes Lions"), jazz, flamenco, games, fireworks. In 2011, it hosted the G20 summit chaired by France.
