The word is out. The sleepy village of Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, once a secret rendezvous for the avant-garde, is the South of France’s latest star. It’s taken a while. Nearly a century ago, Irish designer Eileen Gray parked her roadster beside the little train station here and set out to explore a footpath above the shimmering Mediterranean. A major figure of the Parisian Art Deco scene, she chose a plot of land amid this rocky terrain to build her visionary home-on-stilts, Villa E-1027 (now restored to perfection), designed with no break between interior and exterior; a prototype for modern living. A few years later, Coco Chanel built Villa Pausa above Roquebrune, entertaining Churchill, Cocteau, Picasso and Dalí. Only Virginia Woolf – a guest at Villa La Souco, another bohemian enclave – remained unimpressed by the isolated villas set on the cliff ‘like eggs’ in a row, where you were doomed to endless contemplation of the sea and the rooftops of the Monte Carlo Casino.
Shift your gaze inland and skyward and you’ll spot the Grande Corniche, built by Napoleon and following the route of the ancient Via Julia Augusta, the mountainous road twisting and turning 1,500 feet above sea level. The plunging views (immortalised in Hitchcock’s Fifties classic To Catch a Thief) are all part of the anticipatory frisson that leads to your arrival at The Maybourne Riviera, the French debut for the Maybourne Hotel Group (Claridge’s, The Connaught and The Berkeley in London, and The Maybourne Beverly Hills).
As a long-time Côte d’Azur resident, I’ve often driven past this dramatically located site en route to Italy’s autostrada. When what was the Vista Palace closed, the hotel’s abandoned shell morphed into boarded-up eyesore that lasted eight years. So, in 2018, when Paddy McKillen (the Irish-born head of the Maybourne group and owner of the Chateau La Coste wine estate near Aix-en-Provence) took on the project, locals heaved a sigh of relief, yet still cast an anxious eye on the meticulous reimagining of the structure.
It’s a transformation that has redefined the whole area. Even from down on the beach, you catch glimpses of the hotel’s dazzling block of white criss-crossed lines and floor-to-ceiling glass, designed by veteran French architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte; after dark, it glows with twinkly lights. The cavernous lobby is an unabashed show-stopper, with its colossal sculpture of an intertwined couple by Louise Bourgeois. Gray’s squishy Bibendum chairs, a lacquered screen, plus lithos by Le Corbusier all set the modernist mood. However, the real draw is the light outside, pulling you to the edge.
From the terrace of the Riviera Restaurant (regional dishes with the finest locally sourced products from Liguria to Nice; curvy furnishings with powdery pastel hues), the ever-changing panorama of distant sailboats, mega-yachts and swooping hang-gliders unfurls. From each of the 69 rooms and suites, you can watch the cotton-candy sunrise over Cap Martin; sunset – when the hills turn pale blue and the lights of Monte Carlo switch on – might be viewed from your marble bathtub or at the bar with a vine-peach Bellini.
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The uncluttered rooms come in different shapes and sizes – the apartment-style panoramic suites, with their wrap-around terraces, are a nautical nod to an ocean liner; some of the hill-hugging Corniche rooms with pine-shaded terraces also have private pools. Lovingly realised details range from the deep-blue crystal bathroom taps to wave-of-the-hand swipe lifts and the seersucker suits of the staff. There’s a cutting-edge holistic spa, a botanical garden, an indoor and outdoor pool – the latter built into the rock so you see nothing but a mirage-like haze of pool, sea and sky. Hidden away at the tip of Cap Martin, the Riviera Playa beach club has no actual beach but from a sunbed on the deck you might as well be on a yacht, ordering lobster. It’s more a place to read in peace than to dance on the tables.
Essentially, the ambitious nouveau luxe of The Maybourne Riviera is a multi-faceted reinvention of a hotel that showcases the natural elements surrounding it. To achieve this, the group has gathered some of the biggest names in interior design (Bryan O’Sullivan, André Fu, Pierre Yovanovitch and Michelle Wu, as well as private-jet and yacht notable Rigby & Rigby) along with a collection of museum-quality contemporary art (Tom Shannon, Jeppe Hein, Prune Nourry and Bourgeois, of course, among others).
The other big players are from the culinary world. Multi-starred Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s Pool Bar serves truffle pizza and lobster rolls with rosemary-spiked fries, while his eponymous restaurant includes a sushi bar steered by Japanese chef Hiro Sato. For tea, pastry wizard Benoît Dutreige whips up a divine Menton lemon tart. The high point, up on the top floor, is Ceto: ‘an ode to the sea’, according to Menton-based Argentinian chef Mauro Colagreco, whose holy trinity of Michelin stars at Mirazur hasn’t deterred him from exploring new territory in his own backyard. Colagreco takes a deep dive into the Mediterranean – even the Champagne has been gently rocked for months in a 196ft-deep underwater cellar. ‘The desserts,’ he explains. But his pride and joy is the state-of-the-art cold chamber lined with pink Himalayan salts, designed for a two-month maturation of fish and resulting in astonishing flavours, such as thinly sliced red tuna with a charcuterie-like texture.
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I cross paths with McKillen in the lobby and we chat about his affinity for the Côte d’Azur, particularly Roquebrune-Cap-Martin. ‘It has always had an Irish connection,’ he tells me. Not only Eileen Gray, but next door in Monaco, with Princess Grace’s Irish roots, and the photographer Edward Quinn, who shot the glamorous golden age of the Riviera. Before that, WB Yeats, who spent his final days in the village and was buried in the churchyard.
But why look back. That this opening is a game-changer for this part of the Riviera is undoubted. There’s very little to compare it with. The Grand-Hôtel du Cap-Ferrat, Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc and, in Monaco, the Hôtel de Paris, the Hermitage and the Mêtropole are all historic palaces intent on buffing up their old-world image. The closest in spirit is La Réserve Ramatuelle, for its natural beauty and understated chic. But The Maybourne Riviera feels different – more playful and stylishly hip. And despite involving five celebrated designers, it has achieved aesthetic harmony. Resolutely contemporary, poetic and unpretentious, this hotel looks south, straight into the sun – a revival of that brave, modernist spirit with which Eileen Gray would identify. As she once wrote, ‘The future projects light, the past only shadows.’
Doubles from about £530