page_title: Menton
section_title: Geography
hierarchical_section_title: Menton / Geography
caption_attribution_description: Summary Français&#160;: Vue de Menton depuis l'autoroute Nederlands: Zicht op Menton van de autoroute English: View at Menton from the highway Source Photo Shiva-Nataraja Statut Gérald Anfossi
context_page_description: Menton is a commune in the Alpes-Maritimes department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region on the French Riviera, close to the Italian border.
  Menton has always been a frontier town. For centuries, it formed the border between Provence and Genoa. It has been French ever since the plebiscite of 1860, when it soon became a fashionable tourist centre with grand mansions and gardens. Its temperate Mediterranean climate is especially favourable to the citrus industry, with which it is strongly identified.
context_section_description: Menton, nicknamed the Pearl of France, is located on the Mediterranean Sea at the Franco-Italian border, just across from the Ligurian town of Ventimiglia.
  The fishing industry was devastated in the 1980s and 1990s due to a combination of overfishing and hypoxia in the bay. At the time, the devastation was erroneously attributed to the dubiously nicknamed "killer algae" Caulerpa taxifolia (a non-native Asian tropical green alga first discovered in the Mediterranean Sea adjacent to the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco in 1984) spread throughout the coastal sea floor. Later, sound scientific findings revealed that the seaweed was adept at absorbing pollutants and excess nutrients, actually aiding the recovery of native Posidonia sea grass and enhancing local fish populations and overall biodiversity.
caption: View of the port of Menton
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