Montée des Agaves

This small street where Sayajirao III Gaekwad, the Indian prince of Baroda, lived from 1976 to 1985 (known as Princi) is the very type of alleyway typical of the old village of Cagnes. Narrow, the traffic is not disturbed, only pedestrians can use it and disturb its intimacy. Without doubt, it owes its name to the numerous presence of this variety of plant in a sector that was not privileged to receive them. It is the most photographed street of the Haut de Cagnes. There are about fifty species of agaves widespread in South America, Mexico and the southern United States. On the Mediterranean coast the most common variety is the agave americana. This textile plant with yellowish green flowers is a magnificent ornament for winter gardens. The agave remains in a vegetative state for several decades, only to bloom once, giving an inflorescence of about 10 meters high whose leaves provide textile fibers. According to the legend, the agaves bloom only every hundred years, then they die, and this bloom is announced by a detonation similar to a gunshot! It is too often called, wrongly: aloe, fat plant of the hot countries whose bitter juice is used in pharmacy and dyeing.