What the fare includes, and what it leaves outside
The fare, by sedan as by van, covers 25 kilometres and 30 minutes quoted from the airport. The price includes tolls, fuel and parking on arrival. It is confirmed when you book and it does not move.
What it excludes deserves saying here more than elsewhere, because local demand invites the confusion: a day of business meetings on the neighbouring technology park is not an airport transfer. It is hourly hire, booked separately and charged by the hour. Mixing the two produces a quote that does not match the day actually spent.
A square listed down to its ground
The fact is administrative, and it settles a practical question. Place des Arcades has been listed as a historic monument since 12 June 1992. The listing covers the square with its ground surface, all the arcaded galleries that border it, and the facades of the surrounding houses.
So no car parks on that square. Passengers are set down in an adjoining street, and the question is settled before arrival rather than while circling the cobbles.
The village layout completes the picture. It is built on a grid, with streets meeting at right angles around the central square — a seventeenth-century inheritance the heritage record compares to the bastides of south-west France. For the passenger that is convenient: name a street and a corner. For the car it is harsher: those streets are short, narrow, and offer no way to turn round halfway.
Four short-stay bays exist at the closest point, at the avenue Gambetta car park, 7 rue Gambetta, which holds 23 spaces including seven blue-zone bays and one reserved bay. Beyond that, capacity is plentiful: Vallis Bona 211 spaces, Hôtel de Ville 133, Anciens Combattants 96, Pierrefeu 48. What is scarce is immediate proximity — which is why those four short-stay bays matter.
Sophia Antipolis is not an address
This is the costliest mistake in the area, and it happens every week. The technology park covers 2,400 hectares across five communes. The agglomeration names its districts: Garbejaire, Saint-Philippe, Trois Moulins, Les Lucioles, Haut Sartoux.
Giving “Sophia Antipolis” as a pick-up point gives a territory, not a point. A driver at the right name but the wrong district can be several kilometres from his passenger on a meeting morning.
The useful information is two items long: the district, and the street number — route des Lucioles, route des Dolines, and so on. With those two, the pick-up runs to the minute. Without them it runs on luck, and a fixed fare does not buy back a missed meeting.