Menton Lemon Festival

Menton's Fete du Citron began as a private 1928 hotel garden exhibition, becoming a municipal festival named in 1934, with its signature monumental citrus sculptures in the Bioves Gardens debuting in 1935. Held each February, sculptures up to eleven meters tall use as much as fifteen tonnes of hand-placed lemons and oranges, much of it now imported from Spain, drawing more than 200,000 visitors to what was once Europe's leading lemon-growing town.

Menton's lemon festival began almost by accident in 1928, when a local hotelier staged a private exhibition of flowers and citrus fruit in the gardens of the Riviera Hotel, drawing enough interest that the municipality took over organizing the event the following year; the name Fete du Citron was formally adopted in 1934, and the festival's signature attraction, monumental sculptures built entirely from lemons and oranges displayed in the Bioves Gardens, debuted in 1935 and has continued every year since.