Seven years after a terrorist attack, Nice has rebuilt itself

When the Tour de France, a gruelling multi-stage cycling race, takes place in July 2024, it will for the first time in its 120-year history end not in Paris, but in Nice. Instead of finishing on the Champs-Elysées, cyclists will complete the final stage along the palm-fringed Promenade des Anglais, on the Riviera. For the city of Nice, the event will be moving as well as being a source of pride. July will also mark eight years since a lorry ploughed into a festive crowd in a that killed 86 people, and left the city in shock. Today Nice is trying to turn its response to that horror into a way to reinvent the city.The attack of 2016 took place on France’s national holiday, Bastille Day, when locals and holidaymakers were out celebrating on the promenade. Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, a Tunisian citizen resident in France, drove a 19-tonne lorry for 2km into crowds of families, before being shot dead by the police. Islamic State claimed the attack as an act of jihad, although investigators never found a direct link to the perpetrator. In the following days, the beachfront was turned into a shrine to the dead. Pebbles, teddy bears, dolls, drawings, candles and flowers were laid all along the promenade where victims fell. A place of revelry was turned into one of grief.