[3] On 31 January 1897, the last stage of the Marseilles-Nice race was a 17 km hillclimb between Nice and La Turbie; André Michelin, at the wheel of a De Dion powered by a steam engine, won the race at the incredible average speed of 31.8 km per h. On 30 March 1900, German driver Wilhelm Bauer crashed and died, being the first driver killed during a hillclimb speed event.

On 1 April 1903, William Eliot Morris Zborowski, Count de Montsaulvain, died at the wheel of his Mercedes nearly at the same place as Bauer.

As reported in The New York Times, 2 April 1903, the French Minister of the Interior ordered the Prefect of Alpes-Maritimes to "stop the further use of the Nice-La Turbie course for automobiles."

The boundaries of La Turbie were formerly more extensive and included the territory now contained in the town of Beausoleil, formerly known as Haut-Monte-Carlo, owing to its proximity to Monaco.

[5] La Turbie is built, partly, with old stones recovered from the ruins of the Trophy of the Alpes (Trophy of Augustus), a Roman monument built by the Emperor Augustus to celebrate his victory over the Ligurian tribes which lived in the mountains of the area and attacked the merchants plying the Roman trade routes.