Best hotels in Antibes

Cannes and Nice sit 20 minutes off in either direction, yet from the tip of Cap d'Antibes, both disappear entirely, swallowed by nine hectares of pine forest and a coastline straight off the front of a postcard. And that’s the best bit of Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc: total seclusion, right in the middle of the busiest stretch of the Riviera. The cliffside pool, cut straight into the rock, comes with a trapeze slung above the water, where Picasso, Hemingway and the Fitzgeralds once filled its cabanas, inventing the Riviera season as we know it. Three MICHELIN Keys, one of only a handful of hotels anywhere holding them, confirm what regulars already know… Nowhere else on this coast does it quite like Eden Roc.

This Art Deco hotel is built directly on the shore in Juan-les-Pins, at the foot of Cap d'Antibes, and bills itself as the first on the Riviera with its feet in the water. Nice airport is 20–30 minutes away by car and the restaurants of Juan-les-Pins a ten-minute walk, so it suits a two-night stopover as well as a week by the sea. Inside, the 1930s glamour has been restored rather than replaced, with chrome chandeliers, period murals and a mosaic floor. F. Scott Fitzgerald started Tender Is the Night here when it was still a private villa. Come for the setting, and save your evenings for the bar.