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Somewhere between Cannes Film Festival’s inception in the late ’30s, Grace Kelly and Cary Grant’s mid-century turn in Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief, and Slim Aarons’s snaps of indolently glamorous, heavily bronzed Americans lounging by Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc’s basalt-cliff-backed pool in the ’70s, it’s largely been forgotten that the French Riviera was, originally, a winter sun destination. During the 19th century, northern European “swallows” followed Queen Victoria south to its maritime-pine-lined shores from September through March in pursuit of “climate therapy,” retreating when temperatures rose to parasol-necessitating levels.
But then, almost exactly a century ago, things began to change. “[Back in 1925], Cannes resembled a winter resort enveloped, for the summer, in slip covers, with only a few of the local shops and one hotel open,” Vogue marveled in its September 1931 issue. “Now the place is teeming with life in summer, far more so than winter… The harbor is filled with yachts and speedboats, and the Croisette bristles with the branches of well-known Paris houses—dressmakers, jewelers, and whatnot. At every other step, there is a bar or an outdoor terrace, where people dine at night in the light of shaded candles. A ceaseless procession of motorcars and people promenading on foot go by, and this year, countless public bathing establishments, like miniature plages, have sprung up along its entire length. But, unlike the first two or three seasons during which the Riviera was becoming fashionable in the summer, the country has spread out, so to speak, until now, there are groups of people all along the coast for miles, from Cap-Martin to Toulon.”
It’s a description that more or less still holds true, but, in recent years, a number of “swallows” have gradually started migrating to the Côte d’Azur in winter once again—and they’re well-rewarded for their efforts. When The Maybourne Riviera, a glass-and-concrete behemoth perched above Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, opened in 2021, the plan was always for it to stay open all year round, when the “fake, absurd, amazing, delicious” light that so enchanted Matisse is at its best. The Anantara Plaza followed in 2023, restoring the golden façade and faded grandeur of Nice’s belle époque Hôtel de France and espousing the charms of the Promenade des Anglais in the off-season. (Nice, in fact, won UNESCO World Heritage Status as “the winter resort town of the Riviera” in 2021 after much campaigning by mayor Christian Estrosi.) And this year? Arev, a kitschy salute to Riviera glamour (think: a tricolore color scheme and nautical décor), will be welcoming guests in St Tropez all winter long, as will Valéry Grégo, whose Hôtel du Couvent in Nice is a lesson in what hospitality should be.
Grégo—who, thanks to Le Pigalle in Paris, Les Roches Rouges in Saint-Raphaël, and L’Alpaga in Megève, has a reputation as France’s hotelier ne plus ultra—spent a decade and a Pope’s ransom restoring this property in Nice’s Old Town, which started life as a convent in 1604, and fell into disrepair when the last nuns left in the 1980s. His commitment to retaining the integrity of the 7,500-square-meter compound saw him make pilgrimages to no fewer than 30 convents and monasteries across the South of France, in between poring over thousands of historical records and documents in the Archives Départementales du Var, Archives Diocésaines de Nice, and Archives Départementales des Alpes-Maritimes to ensure the fidelity of the refurb. Its acres of terraced gardens—which range from decorative to edible to medicinal in nature—have been meticulously replanted with persimmon trees and olive groves, wild lettuces, and Provençal herbs, the latter of which are used by Hôtel du Couvent’s herbalist Gregory Unrein to concoct soothing infusions at the on-site apothecary. Fruit-laden citrus trees, meanwhile, once again fill the Cours d’Oranger, or Courtyard of Oranges, where the sisters of the Order of Saint Clare would gather centuries ago.
None of which is to say that the hotel is in any way spartan, or that staying here involves exercising even a modicum of self-restraint. If Grégo conserved the building’s fundamental architectural details (plaster ceilings, terracotta flooring, limestone walls), the neo-monastic interiors recall Rose Uniacke’s refined minimalism, but with added Mediterranean warmth. I stayed in the Terrasse du Cloître suite, whose mahogany minibar, stocked with bottles of Henri Bardouin Pastis and RinQuinQuin à la Pêche, sits beside a Picasso gouache commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev in 1920 for a staging of Le Tricorne. Every common area, on the other hand, features the dramatic, Baroque arrangements of Majid Mohammad, the owner of Muse in Montmartre and John Galliano’s personal florist; one evening, I sip a Nuit Paisible Forte tea meant to help me sleep in Le Bar beside a vast spray of delphiniums in an Italianate urn. Even the toiletries here are a cut above the usual Diptyque offering, with Fragonard soaps in every bathroom along with custom products developed by perfumer Azzi Glasser with notes of amber, vetiver, and wormwood.
As for the food? There’s La Boulangerie on site, where ancient grains are milled and transformed into croissants and baguettes; the relaxed al fresco eatery La Guinguette, where you can order salade Niçoise and citrus sorbet while admiring the glittering Baie des Anges in the distance; and Le Bar for apero hour and nightcaps. Nothing else, however, can quite hold a candle to Thomas Vételé’s Le Restaurant du Couvent, a welcome riposte to the cult of haute cuisine and its many Côte d’Azur-based acolytes. The menu here, in other words, is less Escoffier, more Elizabeth David. At this time of year, a dinner might begin with chilled ratatouille made with vegetables from the gardens followed by herbed veal chops and peach skin soup. If that isn’t a good enough reason to book a flight, I don’t know what is.
Visiting the French Riviera this winter? Below, find Vogue’s edit of destinations worth planning a day trip around.
Designed by Michel Marot in the ’60s and perched on Nice’s hill of Saint-Barthélemy, Villa Arson is both a hub for the contemporary arts and an architectural marvel, with its central 18th-century Italianate villa surrounded by grounds perfumed with mimosa and studded with Brutalist structures.
In the ’60s, Hemingway wistfully described the Côte d’Azur of his youth in A Moveable Feast, reminiscing about “the sand beaches and the stretches of pine woods and the mountains of the Esterel going out into the sea.” Catch a ferry to Île de Porquerolles from October onwards, and you, too, can experience the landscape of the Riviera in its most pristine (and tourist-free) state.
The inside of this musée in Nice is given over to Marc Chagall’s religious works, including 1966’s The Biblical Message, while the modernist artist personally collaborated with landscape designer Henri Fisch on the gardens, complete with a pool of agapanthus that open on Chagall’s birthday every year.
Le Domaine de Manon is an institution in Grasse, with fourth-generation grower Carole Biancalana cultivating the cabbage roses, tuberoses, and royal jasmine that form the basis of Dior’s perfumes. While the former blooms in spring, the latter are harvested from August through October—with the fields open to visitors every Tuesday morning.
Booking is required for Eileen Gray’s first Modernist villa at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, which sits just around the corner from Le Corbusier’s Cabanon, but it’s more than worth the admin to see this ’20s masterpiece. About 40 minutes drive along the coast, meanwhile, lies the rosy, maximalist Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, whose form is inspired by the Edwardian Île de France liner.
So much is made (and understandably so) of Provençal markets, but during the wintertime, bricks-and-mortar shops are the way forward—and nowhere has better choices on the French Riviera than Marseille. Maison Empereur, Le Pere Blaize, and Oeuvres Sensibles are all institutions in their own right.
French archaeologist Théodore Reinach built the fabulously kitschy Villa Kérylos on the tip of Baie des Fourmis as a testament to the 2nd-century BCE Grecian landmarks he had seen on the island of Delos. Completed in 1908, the finished structure includes a balaneion lined with Hellenic mosaics, lemonwood furniture by Parisian cabinetmaker Louis-François Bettenfeld, and a peristyle filled with both Provençal light and Doric columns.
Jean Cocteau moved to Villefranche-sur-Mer in 1924, and promptly set about convincing locals to allow him to paint this 14th-century chapel with mythical frescoes inspired by the life of Saint Peter. What he didn’t mention: he also planned on incorporating references to his own works, including Orpheus and his whimsical murals at Villa Santo Sospir in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat.
You’re spoilt for choice when it comes to museums in Nice, from Musée Matisse to Musée Archéologique de Nice-Cimiez to the aforementioned Musée Marc Chagall, but there’s something particularly charming about Palais Lascaris, the 17th-century Baroque home of the noble Lascaris-Vintimille family, whose ceiling frescoes and Flemish tapestries are now juxtaposed with more than 500 instruments dating back to the 1500s.