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Hotel Belles Rives lives up to the reputation of its famous guests

In a hospitality world that bandies around the word iconic as though every hotel deserves the moniker, Hotel Belles Rives is the real thing.

A view to write for at Hotel Belles Rives, France. Picture: Elizabeth Meryment
A view to write for at Hotel Belles Rives, France. Picture: Elizabeth Meryment
The Weekend Australian Magazine

On the pleasant shore of the French Riviera, about halfway between Marseilles and the Italian border, stands a large, proud, rose-coloured hotel. Deferential palms cool its flushed facade, and before it stretches a short dazzling beach. Lately it has become a summer resort of notable and fashionable people.

Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald

If there is one thing literature is often guilty of, it surely must be making things seem more glamorous than they are in real life. Many a time I’ve read a book then eagerly gone to the place where the action takes place – a hotel, a city, a theatre or even a beach – only to find the reality lacks that sepia quality of the imagination. The moors of northern England, for instance, so gothic and spooky in Wuthering Heights, look like dreadful wet bogs in real life. Highly disappointing.

But to arrive at Hotel Belles Rives on glorious Cap d’Antibes, along the finest stretch of the Cote d’Azure in the south of France, is to have the opposite experience. Despite having been described in the soft and flowery language of the great American novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, this is an experience that exceeds expectations. A turn up for the books, you might say.

F. Scott Fitzgerald keeps a watch over the Fitzgerald Bar. Photo: Supplied
F. Scott Fitzgerald keeps a watch over the Fitzgerald Bar. Photo: Supplied
The Fitzgerald Bar. Photo: Elizabeth Meryment
The Fitzgerald Bar. Photo: Elizabeth Meryment

We arrive, as it happens, in the rain.

It’s a dour day in April, the weather noncommittal, neither warm nor cold, the season just getting started for the year in the Riviera, the rain insistent, when the hotel looms through the streets of the town like a light.

The car pulls up behind the fortress-like stone building and in a moment we are whisked inside, greeted with warmth and hospitality, and shown our room. The door opens on our suite and the rain suddenly stops. And as we throw asunder the French doors to the balcony, before us looms the Riviera, glistening blue and green in the silvery light as far as the eye can see. If there is a more thrilling introduction to the south of France, I challenge you to find it. Fitzgerald, for once, hardly did it justice.

Take a seat: the pier at Belles Rives Hotel
Take a seat: the pier at Belles Rives Hotel

In a world awash with hyperbole, and in a hospitality space that bandies around the word “iconic” as though every hotel deserves the moniker, Hotel Belles Rives is the real thing. Built in 1929, its origins seem now shrouded in mystery – we receive several differing accounts of its birth from hotel staff – but it is known that Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda lived at a villa on the property in the mid-1920s while he wrote Tender is the Night, published in 1934, and worked on The Great Gatsby, published in 1925. Indeed, just out the front of the hotel is the mythical green light that features prominently in Gatsby (although in the book it is represented as part of the Long Island coastline), preserved from Fitzgerald’s day and still used to guide the yachts that glide up and down the waterway here. This year, the hotel is celebrating the centenary of the novel that came to symbolise the artistic energy of the jazz era, and which Scott and Zelda certainly lived to excess while in the neighbourhood.

The imposing exterior of Hotel Belles Rives. Photo: Supplied
The imposing exterior of Hotel Belles Rives. Photo: Supplied

For guests with a literary bent, just being in the hotel is an intoxicating experience. Walk through the lobby to the glitzy Fitzgerald Bar with its larger-than-lifesize photographs of Fitzgerald, as well as other celebrities, from Ella Fitzgerald to Sting, who have stayed here over the years. Every year the hotel hosts the Prix Fitzgerald, a prize for contemporary literature, which has been won in recent years by, among others, Joyce Carol Oates, Quentin Tarantino, Nick Hornby and Jeffrey Eugenides. Their photographs adorn the walls too.

Attention has been made to retain the hotel’s Art Deco gloss. The Fitzgerald Bar comes complete with baby grand piano, geometric lamps and an atmospheric literary bar mural, which you can admire while you sip Scott-and-Zelda inspired cocktails such as a “Sparkling Scott” with champagne, rosé, lime and raspberry, or a “Daisy Royal” with vodka, basil, champagne, strawberry syrup and lemon. If you stay for dinner you might dine on classic South of France dishes the writers themselves might have eaten, including pissaladière (a savoury tart) and grilled bass. Out the windows, the Mediterranean sighs and twinkles peacefully.

The terrace at Belles Rives exudes glamour. Picture: Elizabeth Meryment
The terrace at Belles Rives exudes glamour. Picture: Elizabeth Meryment
The view from the hotel rooms is quite speical. Picture: Elizabeth Meryment
The view from the hotel rooms is quite speical. Picture: Elizabeth Meryment

On sunny days, drinks and dinner can be had on what must be the world’s most glamorous terrace, overlooking the water on a deck emblazoned with a violently colourful bougainvillea and set with natty tables and blue umbrellas that mirror the colour of the water. Or by the sea, find the Beach Bar, a restaurant where you can sip champagne and eat pasta and pastries with the Med literally lapping at your feet. It is pure magic.

Last year, the hotel’s 43 suites were sumptuously restored and renovated, which included the installation of Hermès wallpapers in each room. The rooms are comfortable, glamorous and delightfully old-fashioned: you don’t have to use an iPad to open the French doors, you just push them open. The marble bathrooms might be slightly too archaic for some – the shower in our room is in the bath – but there’s a certain old-world style about that too.

By far the best option is to book a room with a sea view, for it eliminates the need to do anything while here other than pull up a chair on the balcony and stare at the water. And what water. I have been to the south of France many times but have never had a personal experience with the Côte d’Azure like this. From your room it’s just there, within arm’s reach, sparkling, alluring, utterly beguiling. The water alone is worth the stay. But in fact the hotel exudes charm at every turn. From the breakfast room with its selection of French pastries to the sundecks available to guests at the end of the pier, this is a destination of dazzle.

Whether Fitzgerald was referring to Hotel Belles Rives in the opening lines of Tender is the Night – quoted at the top of this story – is open to conjecture. But sitting in the Fitzgerald Bar over a Sparking Scott with the green light flashing in the water down below, it’s hard not to imagine that he was. Here’s cheers to you, Scott and Zelda.


Hotel Belles Rives

Getting there: Antibes is a 30-minute drive from Nice airport.

Stay: Hotel Belles Rives, 33 Bd Edouard Baudoin, Juan-Les-Pins, Antibes, France (bellesrives.com). Rooms from E390 ($692).

Tarts by the sea at the Beach Bar. Picture: Elizabeth Meryment
Tarts by the sea at the Beach Bar. Picture: Elizabeth Meryment
Cocktails are delicious at Bar Fitzgerald. Picture: Elizabeth Meryment
Cocktails are delicious at Bar Fitzgerald. Picture: Elizabeth Meryment

Eat: The hotel has many options for dining. Breakfast is served in La Passagère, which spills onto the terrace so glamorously on warm and sunny days (which is most days in the south of France). The restaurant operates as a Michelin-starred seafood restaurant for lunch and dinner (sadly it was closed for dining during our visit as we arrived too early in the season). The Beach Bar (called Plage Belles Rives in French) offers a Cote d’Azure-inspired menu, meaning it is mostly French with Italian influences. Have a Niçoise salad or linguine with clams or beef tartare. Drink champagne and feel like you are Scott Fitzgerald himself, or perhaps, Zelda Fitzgerald. The Fitzgerald Bar is a cosy place for a cocktail or dinner if La Passagère is closed; the food and cocktails are excellent, be sure to have the chocolate soufflé, it is outstanding. Another local option is Paseo, a Middle Eastern restaurant that inhabits the gloriously colourful courtyard of Belles Rives’ sister hotel, Hotel Juana, situated about 200m down the road. Hotel Juana (hotel-juana.com) is a lovely property, of the same vintage as Belles Rives, with an abundance of Art Deco glory; consider staying there if you can’t get into Belles Rives in peak season. The restaurant is lots of fun and a nice alternative to dining on French food again.

Hotel Juana is Belles Rives sister hotel. Picture: Supplied
Hotel Juana is Belles Rives sister hotel. Picture: Supplied

Do: Have a facial at Belles Rives’ onsite Beauty Corner. French beauty treatments are world-class and these offerings are made for relaxation; the prices are very good. Otherwise, this is a beautiful base to explore the south of France; it’s an easy walk to the tip of the cape, or catch the train to Nice. The scenery locally is magnificent. Guests of Belles Rives are reserved sunbeds at the end of the hotel’s jetty, and can also swim in the swimming pool at Hotel Juana. Or you can spend your days sipping wine and staring at the Mediterranean. This is good for the soul. Also try waterskiing, which takes place right out front of the hotel. In fact, waterskiing was invented here in the 1930s. Belles Rives has a waterskiing club and offers waterskiing lessons for novices.

Elizabeth Meryment
Elizabeth MerymentLIfestyle Content Director -The Weekend Australian Magazine

Elizabeth Meryment is a senior travel, food and lifestyle writer and journalist. Based in Sydney, she has been a writer, editor, and contributor to The Australian since 2003, and has worked across titles including The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph, Qantas Magazine, delicious and more. Since 2022, she has edited lifestyle content for The Weekend Australian Magazine.

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Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/weekend-australian-magazine/book-into-for-the-centenery-party-of-the-hotel-that-inspired-some-of-the-worlds-greatest-literature/news-story/9eaddf1815d62d063f2a4debc9075162