Cap d’Antibes Beach Hotel

Behind a curve of sandy beach, the newly opened Cap d’Antibes Beach Hôtel is the latest addition to a surge of stylish contemporary hotels on the Côte d’Azur. A modest fisherman’s-hut-turned-bouillabaisse-restaurant in the 1950s, the property eventually became a one-star gastronomic haunt and nightclub, Les Pêcheurs, in 2003. Now, after an €8 million renovation, it’s morphed into a chic boutique hotel with 27 lush and comfortable seaview rooms and suites, decorated in soft seaside hues, with aquatic-theme wall frescoes, shimmery fabrics and furnishings conceived by the renowned Hermès designer Sybille de Margerie. After being pampered at the small spa or lazing on the private beach, guests can tumble into the lovely tiled pool just yards away. Even if you don’t stay here, drop in for a memorable meal at the restaurant Les Pêcheurs, where chef Nicolas Sale dishes up exquisitely prepared Mediterranean seafood specialties from red mullet a la plancha with zucchini flowers and saffron potatoes to red and blue lobsters grilled in tarragon and vanilla-flavored sea salt, followed by delicate mouthwatering desserts, including a wild strawberry and nougatine pastry with Greek yogurt ice cream. Lunch and dinner are also served at the informal beach restaurant Le Cap at the water’s edge.

10 blvd Maréchal Juin, 04.92.93.13.30. Doubles from €390. website

Originally published in the July/August 2009 issue of France Today; updated in May 2011