An expert guide to the best French Riviera beach hotels, including the best for private beaches, direct beach access, swimming pools with ocean views, rooms overlooking the sea, Michelin-starred restaurants and top-notch spas, in Nice, Cannes, Saint-Tropez, Èze, Antibes and Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat.
Knockout glamour since the roaring Twenties that lords it over La Croisette. This Art Deco leviathan was built in 1929 to welcome princes, playboys and potentates. Complimentary yoga classes, a heated pool and a light-filled fitness room are a mere handful of the year-round amenities on offer today. Not even a grounding with Heston Blumenthal or the Adria brothers will prepare you for the voyage gastronomique at La Palme d’Or. Since 1991 it has reigned as Cannes’ only two-star Michelin restaurant. Read expert review From £ 260When you win the film festival’s Best Actor or Actress award, you'll most probably be staying at the Carlton. Liz Taylor brought all seven of her husbands here. Faye Dunaway allegedly ordered gallons of goats' milk for her bath. Today, it remains the spot which says: 'You’ve arrived' when you walk through the door. Within, it’s all white pillars, light marble, chandeliers and soaring space enough for an imperial entourage. Prestige suites on the seventh floor have outstanding sea-view terraces. The Carlton Bar and Terrace is legendary among those people who think a bar can be legendary. Read expert review From £ 292Built in 1860 (the year Nice became part of France) the Beau Rivage has long been a cornerstone of beachfront class. And from the sliding glass doors of reception you could be sunbathing on the beach in two minutes flat. This is a contemporary temple bedecked with wide spaces and clean lines. Even standard rooms are largish; some bedrooms have sea views. The year-round lunch and evening meals at Beau Rivage Plage beach club are fabulously fun. Of course, you pay for the Mediterranean views serenaded by 300 sunny days per year. But surely swordfish fillet with ginger was made to be eaten in such a location. Read expert review From £ 92Club Dauphin is the hotel’s pièce de résistance; a once Olympic-sized heated infinity seawater pool so blue it seems almost to blend into the horizon when viewed from above, accessed via a funicular in luscious gardens. It even has a dedicated swimming instructor. Once there you can enjoy spectacular views of the Mediterranean from luxurious sun loungers, served complimentary refreshments on the hour by the club’s attentive pool boys. There is a path that winds all the way round through the town of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat to a beach named Passable. Read expert review From £ 535This five-star palace hotel is located at the heart of three of the French Riviera’s most exclusive seaside resorts (Beaulieu, Villefranche and St-Jean-Cap-Ferrat) and has its own six-mile sandy beach. Behind the ice-cream pink and vanilla facade of this luxury hotel are neo-hellenistic interiors, all Doric columns, Grecian friezes and velvet furnishings. Hire a paddle-board, or chill out on sun-loungers beside the sparkling turquoise, heated, overflow pool, or on the garden deck. There’s also a spa with hammam and sauna. Read expert review From £ 213• The best beach hotels in the Mediterranean
Sitting on the water’s edge, betwixt Cap d’Antibes and Juan-les-Pins, this unique Art Deco hotel is chock-full of original features, a stylish living monument to it’s former residents the Scott Fitzgeralds, and the glamour of The Roaring Twenties jazz age. There are two beaches: one rocky, one of gentle sand which slopes into a natural seawater bay. It’s all about sea views: from the lapping waters at La Plage restaurant, where you can have delicious al fresco buffet breakfasts, to apertifs with a view at Piano Bar Fitzgerald. Read expert review From £ 138• The greatest hotels in Europe
Fabulous, fun and sun-kissed, across from a private beach. The Royal vaunts an imperious location astride Antibes’ ramparts and the Cap d’Antibes. The beach club – a rarity in the Cote d’Azur – occupies the sandy peninsula opposite the hotel. Guests pay €20 (£17) per sunbed per day. There’s also a spa. The hotel restaurant serves as a restaurant in its own right. Head chef Antonello Poli Poli purchases fish solely from Antibes’ fishermen, which find its way into the daily antipasti del mare. Read expert review From £ 95• The best family-friendly hotels in the Mediterranean
A grand 19th-century mansion set among nine hectares of landscaped gardens, and sitting on a quiet road at the rocky tip of Cap d’Antibes, and minutes from the beach. The guest list reads like the credits of a Hollywood movie. For the interiors, think classic architectural lines, sumptuous Louis XV and XVI furnishings, gilded mirrors and chandeliers. Offerings include a heated infinity pool, five clay tennis courts, 33 cabanas, a boutique and a Sisley spa. Read expert review From £ 614• The best honeymoon hotels and destinations
Cap Estel commands its own dazzling peninsula with views that pans from Cap Ferrat to Monaco. Château-like gates seal this most exclusive of five-star villas from the hoi polloi. Just 50 guests enjoy an ethereal playground serenaded by birdsong and scented by botanical grounds. A-list guests are habituées in a private hideaway that pairs Michelin-starred cuisine with absolute discretion. There’s a heated saltwater swimming pool, and bedrooms couple Carrara marble floors with beach club décor. Read expert review From £ 944• The best quieter resorts on the Côte d'Azur
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Behind the apricot-ochre frontage of this tiny hotel just across from the beach, the lobby opens like a brightly-kept home of your classier Provençal friends. Light floods through the windows onto a big white fireplace, a lounge area, pictures of plants and a most welcoming little bar. A lovely patio-cum-courtyard full of plants, flowers and a fountain leads to a very picturesque pool. Some rooms have a maritime theme, with driftwood and travelling trunks; others evoke Morocco and the Orient. Read expert review From £ 219• The world's best outdoor pools
Ground-breaking architect Le Corbusier is the inspiration behind this hotel on the seafront in Roquebrune-Cap Martin, across the road from a pebble beach. Expect sharp Fifties design. From the white leather LC2 chairs and E1027 table to the curvaceous linear drawing etched on the centrepiece luminescent bar in the lounge-lobby, this is Bauhaus at its best. Sea and palm tree views from the rooms are sensational — especially at sunrise and sunset. Read expert review From £ 74• The best honeymoon hotels and destinations
The beachfront Hotel La Perouse has startling sea views, though it still manages to seem slightly withdrawn, in a private stretch of Provence where comfort, politeness and flowers hold sway. This is perhaps the loveliest hotel terrace in Nice where pool, bar and restaurant are found in a setting not unlike a Provençal village square. The restaurant is set under lemon trees, and bedrooms have waves of Italian marble and decent art on the walls. Read expert review From £ 182• The best hotels for wedding venues in the UK
Find it aplomb on the seafront in Villefranche-sur-Mer, with just a fairly quiet road between it and the harbour — this is where local fishermen sell their catch each morning. The visitor book is a rundown of Twenties avant-garde art on the Riviera and the presence of Jean Cocteau oozes out of every last nook and cranny. While staying here in the Fifties, he drew a picture for the hotel that hangs today in the bar. The hotel has no pool, but the beach is down the road and there’s a sauna to warm up in on cooler days. The trump card is the hotel yacht, available to rent with a skipper. Read expert review From £ 158• Europe's best hotels for wedding venues
Michelin-starred dining, sea views and a wealth of antique furniture make this a popular choice among European royalty and holidaying celebrities, bang on the Med in Nice, close to Place Masséna. Everyone from Khrushchev to Richard Burton has enjoyed a drink in its Le Relais bar. Even bad boys try to behave well in what is the last independent palace hotel on the Riviera. Almost impossible not to, in the Royal Salon with a vast portrait of Louis XIV looking on. Or in the exceptional, glass-ceilinged rotunda. The chandelier’s twin is found in the Kremlin. Read expert review From £ 286ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbHLnp6rmaCde6S7ja6iaKyilsOmuI6dnKysmaOutbXOp6ponaWnvLGxjp%2BpmqaTmnyku9OeZJ1lka%2FCs3vAq6uim5yawHDAx55km52jqXqnvsSnmqFlop7DqrHRmmSbnZGYtW60zq2cpatf