Monet, Picasso, George Sand, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis and Madonna all loved Antibes, the only Riviera town, Graham Greene wrote, that had not lost its soul

Avoid Antibes in August, when the town's population quadruples to 300,000. As far back as 1933, the poet Paul Valéry wrote of his exasperation at the "generalised indignity" of Antibes and its more modern extension, Juan-les-Pins. "All those thighs, fake suntans, the derrières with their alternating movement, naked people reading novels, oiling themselves, paving the sand with ill-cooked meat - and the kids, and the gigolos. . ." Even Ireland's Consul General, Pierre Joannon, flees his beloved Antibes for the west of Ireland in August. But as Joannon's literary anthology, Antibes, l'Éden retrouvé (Antibes, Eden Rediscovered, published by La Table Ronde, Paris), makes clear, this magical place between Nice and Cannes is worth a journey.

In early June, there are classical music concerts, when Joannon's son Yann presides over the "Voiles d'Antibes" yacht regatta. In July, Antibes celebrates its historical role as the cradle of the Jazz Age with a festival that has featured Keith Jarrett, John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Ella Fitzgerald. In October, French literati gather for the Grand Prix Littéraire de la Ville D'Antibes - Jacques Audiberti, organised by the indefatigable Monsieur Joannon. Ireland's honorary consul in Antibes since 1973, the author of 10 books on Irish themes, including a biography of Michael Collins, Joannon was awarded the Légion d'Honneur for his work on strengthening Franco-Irish relations.

But the tourists baking on La Garoupe Beach in his home town may miss the more subtle pleasure of an artistic and literary pilgrimage. Graham Greene, who lived in Antibes from 1966 until his death in 1991, said it was the only town on the Riviera that had not lost its soul; early autumn was his favourite season. At the beginning of May We Borrow Your Husband?, Greene describes his alter ego's arrival at the end of summer, when the foreign licence plates begin to disappear and lunch moves indoors.

"It was the time of year I liked best, when Juan les Pins becomes as squalid as a closed fun-fair with Lunar Park boarded up and cards marked fermeture annuelle outside the Pam-Pam and Maxim's. . ." Greene wrote. "Then Antibes comes into its own as a small country town with the Auberge de Provence full of local people and old men sit indoors drinking beer or pastis at the glacier in the Place de Gaulle ... You can always trust the English to stay on longer than others into the autumn. We have a blind faith in the southern sun and we are taken by surprise when the wind blows icily over the Mediterranean. Then a bickering war develops with the hotel-keeper over the heating on the third floor, and the tiles strike cold underfoot. For a man who has reached the age when all he wants is some good wine and some good cheese and a little work, it is the best season of all."

Pierre Joannon met Greene in 1971, by the rubbish bins in the basement of the apartment building in the rue Pasteur where they both lived. Joannon had just read Greene's angry letter to the London Times, suggesting that the British Home Secretary should be subjected to the "white torture" he advocated for IRA suspects. "I complimented him on the letter," Joannon recalls. "He said, 'Come and have a drink on the fourth floor'." The two became friends, and Joannon organised an exhibition about Greene's life and work in Antibes' Picasso Museum after the writer's death.

Greene lived in a simple, one-bedroom apartment with bookshelves covering the walls, and a view over Vauban Port and the Fort Carré. Each day he wrote at least 300 words, and could often be seen buying groceries or drinking dry vermouth at a restaurant table, then lunching on sole meunière or veal liver. "I was very happy in Antibes, the only town I could have lived in," he confided to a friend just before dying. In the tradition of the best Graham Greene novels, he was involved with a married woman, Yvonne Cloetta. "They met in Africa in the 1950s. Graham was hopelessly in love with her," Joannon says. "He had a gentleman's agreement with her husband; she came to Graham's flat in the afternoon, and in the evening she went home to her husband."

The French académicien Michel Déon calls Antibes "a 2,500-year-old youth". Its ancient Greek name, Antipolis, means "the city facing" and sources disagree on whether it meant facing the Mediterranean, facing Corsica - which you can see on clear winter mornings - or Nice. Jacques Audiberti, Antibes' best-loved writer and native son, said it was "like a balcony where Europe ended, definitively separated from the rest of the world".

Antibes and its cape jutting into the sea were home to fishermen and farmers when it began attracting writers and painters in the second half of the 19th century. George Sand, who stayed there in 1868, said she found herself "in a Garden of Eden which seems to swim on the threshold of immensity".

In 1888, urged by his friend Guy de Maupassant, Claude Monet painted 36 of his finest masterpieces in Antibes. "It is so beautiful here, so luminous, so brilliant," Monet wrote. "You are soaked in azure, to the point where it is frightening." Picasso too fell in love with Antibes, staying in the old Grimaldi château in 1946. To show his gratitude, he gave a priceless collection of his works to the town, which turned the château into a Picasso museum.

But Americans gave Antibes fame and glory. In the early 1920s, a rich Irish-American couple, Gerald and Sara Murphy, built the Villa America on the Cap d'Antibes, and invited jazz musicians and the writers of "the Lost Generation". Another American millionaire, the railway heir Frank Jay Gould, and his French wife Florence, were also extravagant hosts and patrons of the arts.

Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald stayed with the Murphys in the summer of 1922. In his book, Pierre Joannon recounts their alcoholic, often suicidal excesses - Zelda's overdose of sleeping pills and a leap over a balustrade in a jealous moment; diving from rocks into the sea in the dark; hairpin curves at high speed; falling asleep in the middle of a level crossing. "They took insane risks because they thought life had to be spent quickly, that one must not grow old," Joannon says.

Joannon describes a photograph of his own father Jean, an inventor and industrialist, taken in front of the Hôtel du Cap, as something out of a Fitzgerald novel. "His hair was slicked back, and he wore black and white two-coloured shoes. He's holding the door of a gleaming car open for a beauty queen in a cloche hat." Today the Hôtel du Cap is considered one of the world's finest, with rooms at up to €1,100 a night. Its visitors include Leonardo DiCaprio, Madonna and Nicole Kidman.

With the fortune he amassed from the invention of an electric fuse, Jean Joannon bought "Les Chênes Verts", a spectacular villa where Jules Verne stayed on the Cap d'Antibes. He left it to his Hibernophile son and daughter-in-law Annick, and the residence now doubles as the Irish Consulate General. Joannon's role in Antibes' cycle of wealthy patrons and brilliant artists has been to chronicle, encourage and entertain contemporary writers. On Saturday mornings, the Irish Consul General wanders through the Provencal market in Antibes' old town, greeting all and sundry, then savours his coffee and newspapers at a café terrace.

For information about Antibes Juan-les-Pins, see: www.antibesjuanlespins.com