The Tête de Chien above Monaco

The Tête de Chien (Monégasque: Testa de Can; "Dog's Head") is a 550 m (1,804 ft) high rock promontory near the village of La Turbie in the Alpes-Maritimes department of France.[1] It overlooks the Principality of Monaco, and is the highest point on the Grande Corniche road.[1][2]

The American diplomat Samuel S. Cox, in his 1870 travel book Search for Winter Sunbeams in the Riviera, Corsica, Algiers and Spain wrote that the Tête de Chien more resembled a tortoise than a dog's head, and believed that Tête de Chien, or rather Testa de Can, was a corruption of Testa de Camp ("Field Head"), as it was where Caesar stationed his troops after the conquest of Gaul.[3] Vere Herbert, the heroine of Ouida's 1880 novel Moths is described as living under the Tête de Chien, "...within a few miles of the brilliant Hell [Monaco]."[4]

In 1897, Gustave Saige described it as "a vertical escarpment of circular shape which gives it a characteristic appearance; it's the Dog's Head."[5]

In 1944, Leopold Bohm, a German defence company commander, was stationed on the Tête de Chien and saw a low flying airplane crash into the sea, which had been pursued by two other planes.[6] Bohm's observation was on the day of the disappearance of the aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and it has been speculated that Bohm saw the final flight of Saint-Exupéry.[6]

Monaco from the Tête de Chien
The Principality of Monaco as seen from Tête de Chien

References

  1. 1 2 Danforth Prince; Darwin Porter (16 September 2010). Frommer's France 2011. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 602–. ISBN 978-0-470-64177-4.
  2. ↑ Dana Facaros; Michael Pauls (2006). Côte D'Azur. New Holland Publishers. pp. 78–. ISBN 978-1-86011-337-6.
  3. ↑ Samuel Sullivan Cox (1870). Search for Winter Sunbeams in the Riviera, Corsica, Algiers and Spain. D. Appleton & Company. pp. 43–.
  4. ↑ Ouida (6 July 2005). Moths. Broadview Press. pp. 397–. ISBN 978-1-77048-193-0.
  5. ↑ Saige, Gustave (1897). Monaco: Ses Origines et Son Histoire. Monaco: Imprimerie de Monaco. Retrieved 5 February 2019.
  6. 1 2 Michael Jackson (2013). The Other Shore: Essays on Writers and Writing. University of California Press. pp. 49–. ISBN 978-0-520-27526-3.

43°43′49.68″N 7°24′10.17″E / 43.7304667°N 7.4028250°E / 43.7304667; 7.4028250

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