The 996-kilometre Route Nationale 7 connects Paris to the Mediterranean, passing through the south-east of the Ile de France, Burgundy, the Rhone Valley, Provence and the Côte d’Azur. It notably crosses the following towns and villages: Fontainebleau, Montargis, Cosne sur Loire, Nevers, Lapalisse, Tarare, Lyon, Vienne, Valence, Montélimar, Avignon, Aix en Provence, Tourves, Fréjus, Cannes and Nice, ending in Menton on the Italian border

.From 1947 to the end of the 1960s, the Nationale 7 symbolised for many French people the time of holidays, carefree living, guaranteed sunshine and the azure blue. Because the Nationale 7, which connected Paris to all the beaches of the Mediterranean coast, was the road for holiday departures par excellence; motorways to the south of France did not yet exist.
Doesn't it evoke memories of roadside picnics, a night spent in an inn, endless traffic jams, heavy goods vehicles stuck in the narrow streets of villages.
The Nationale 7, until the early 1970s, was also a series of service stations where you often had to fill up given the low capacity of the tanks, where the attendants cleaned your windshield and from where you always left with gift points.
The road being too long to be done in a single day, many hotels and inns were ready to welcome you all along the route. Several gourmet restaurants had also set up there.