The wisteria at the Hotel du Cap was planted the year the hotel launched. That was 1870, before a generation of restless pleasure-seeking writers and artists, including Ernest Hemingway, F Scott Fitzgerald and Marc Chagall, turned the classic winter retreat into a summer playground, escaping Prohibition and societal strictures after the Great War.
A century later, the 1970s were another turning point for the Riviera landmark, when the Oetker family bought the villa after sailing past and catching a glimpse of the iconic property. Thus began a new, heady, unbuttoned denim-shirted era, when social boundaries were crossed around the legendary swimming pool, which had been blasted out of basalt and fetishized in society photographer Slim Aarons’ coloured images. Royalty and rock stars mingled with writers, rogues and reprobates. After the jazz and jet ages came the dot-com bubble buzz and the brief oligarchisation of the pool. All these eras are now past.
These days, it is as it should be – “calme, luxe and volupté” – at the Riviera recreation ground and landmark hotel, where the outside world is kept very much at arm’s length. Hotel du Cap has closed only four times in its long 150-year history, most recently during the pandemic, but when I returned last year, the influencers were back in force, posing along the cushiony Grande Allée that rolls out towards the sea. It is pure Instagram gold, of course: a ceremonial catwalk 650 feet long, trumpeted on both sides with pines, that leads from the 19th-century Napoleon III classic mansion, past the flirty palms, to the party terrace of Eden Roc jutting over the water like the prow of a ship. It’s a place to see and be seen – and yet nothing feels more private, peaceful and like a hideaway than a day spent sequestered in one of the 31 cabanas with a bottle of Whispering Angel rosé. These simple, rustic shacks are the heart and soul of the estate, positioned on the rocky outcrops of the seaboard beneath the whispering Aleppo pines.
Other ways to spend the day include wallowing in the Dior Spa, honing that serve on one of five clay tennis courts (which are assiduously hosed down before breakfast) or visiting the beehives and birdhouses. In a corner of the 22 acres of mimosa- and wisteria-scented parkland, there’s even a pet cemetery where regular guests have buried departed companions.
Although the Hotel du Cap moves with the times, it never gives in to the vagaries of fashion and remains a classic. Anatole France’s plaque at the entrance of the path to the cabanas sums up: “What will be is what was”. The hotel still subscribes to the cherished adage that in tumultuous times, living well is the best revenge. Catherine Fairweather
