The main cultural event is the International Film Festival, first held in 1946. The festival gradually grew in size and importance. By the 1970s the festival had become big business, as important for networking as for awarding the prizes, including the prestigious Palme d'Or, and increasingly presenting mainstream Hollywood films.

For ticket reservation contact Palais des Festivals (tel: (04) 9339 0101; website: www.palaisdesfestivals.com). Tickets for general cultural performance and events in Cannes are available at the venue, online (website: www.cannes.fr), or from FNAC, 83 rue d'Antibes (tel: (04) 9706 2950). The monthly French-only publication, Le Mois a Cannes, available from the Cannes Tourist Office, provides cultural listings. Listings are also available online, website: www.cannes.fr.

Music: During the Musical Nights of Le Suquet, international orchestras perform in the Palais des Festivals, Esplanade Georges Pompidou, and chamber orchestras play on the steps of Notre Dame de l'Espérance in Le Suquet. Leading orchestras perform during the festival, such as the Cannes Provence Alpes Côte d'Azur Regional Orchestra. Others perform throughout the year, most notably during the biennial International Classical Music Festival.

Theatre: During the International Actors' Performance Festival, small venues are used to stage humorous sketches. Productions are often performed in the Espace Miramar, on the corner of La Croisette and rue Pasteur (tel: (04) 9343 8626), and the smaller theatre Alexandre III, 19 boulevard Alexandre III (tel: (04) 9394 3344).

Dance: The Ecole Supérieure de Danse de Cannes Rosella Hightower, 5 rue de Colmar (tel: (04) 9306 7979; website: www.cannesdance.com), prepares seven- to 18-year-olds for a career in international ballet. The biennial International Dance Festival comprises a mix of neoclassical, contemporary, minimalist and postmodern dance.

Film: Since the International Film Festival (website: www.festival-cannes.fr) is reserved for professionals only, the Cannes Festival Forum, in May, organises meetings and screenings for film fans. Young critics are targeted at numerous writing workshops during Cannes' Cinematographic Meeting, in December. In Festival Panorama, 10 feature films that have won awards in various international festivals compete. Films made in Cannes and the Riviera include Truth or Dare/In Bed with Madonna (1991) and the Cary Grant and Grace Kelly classic, To Catch a Thief (1955).

Cinemas in the city include Arcades, 77 rue Félix Faure (tel: (04) 9339 0098), and Olympia, 16 rue de la Pompe (tel: (08) 3668 0029). Salle Raimu, avenue de la Borde (tel: (04) 9347 2116), shows original versions of art films.

Literary Notes: F Scott Fitzgerald is the most famous writer to glamorise the Riviera. The literary fruits of his frequent visits between 1924-29 created a myth of 1920s excess, best exemplified in his novels The Great Gatsby (1925) and Tender is the Night (1934), in which he wrote: 'Cannes, Nice, Monte Carlo - began to glow through their camouflage, whispering of old kings come to dine or die, of rajahs tossing Buddha's eyes to English ballerinas, of Russian princes turning the weeks into Baltic twilights in the lost caviar days.'