Valbonne Hotels

Valbonne is a commune near Nice in the Alpes-Maritimes department in the Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur region in southeastern France. Valbonne means 'the good valley' in Provencal and translates to Vaubona in Occitan. The people who live there are known as 'Valbonais' or 'Sophipolitains'. The village is in the commune of Valbonne Sophia Antipolis, which consists of the village of Valbonne, and the technology park of Sophia Antipolis. There are traces of prehistoric human settlement in the area that date back to the Iron Age, the first days of agriculture. Many prehistoric artifacts such as Neolithic stone axes, funeral urns from the Bronze Age, and fragments of amphora, oil and grain jars (dolia) have been excavated . The remains of an aqueduct constructed during Roman settlement in the 3rd century A.D. are also present in the area of Clausonne. While the village has been preserved in its original condition, nearby is the high tech centre of Sophia Antipolis, constructed in the 1970s along the same lines as La Défense near Paris. The name was adopted from the ancient Greek colony of Antipolis which resided in the nearby village of Antibes. This plateau was one of the few remaining vast sections of land that had remained untouched in the French Riviera. Initially, investors interested in Sophia Antipolis were mainly oil and mining companies. The park, however, took a different turn when the university of Nice decided to move parts of its campus to the plateau in the 1980s.