FLASHBACK

French Riviera, 1915.

Judging from this picture, you could say that one of the most illustrious hotels on the French Riviera got off to a rocky start. Originally built as a writers’ retreat called Villa Soleil, Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc (known as Grand Hôtel du Cap until 1987) occupies a grand Napoleon III–style mansion set amid nine hectares of landscaped gardens at the tip of Cap d’Antibes, just down the coast from Cannes. It first opened as a hotel proper 150 years ago, but the establishment’s now-iconic saltwater pool was a later addition, carved out of the basalt cliff face in 1914. Back then, the Riviera was still primarily a winter destination for British and other northern European grandees; during the summer months, the Cap was all but deserted. The pool was designed to help remedy that. And it did. Perched four meters above the Mediterranean, it would prove a magnet for sunseekers, especially the jet-setting Americans who began descending on the Riviera in the 1920s. By the time F. Scott Fitzgerald immortalized Hôtel du Cap (as the fictitious Hôtel des Etrangers) in Tender is the Night, the property had become “a summer resort of notable and fashionable people.” It was here that Rita Hayworth fell in love with Prince Aly Khan, and that Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor spent their (first) honeymoon. Following the launch of the Cannes Film Festival in 1946, the hotel cemented its position as a favorite escape for Hollywood celebrities; its Golden Book of guest signatures reads like a who’s who of Tinseltown royalty. Now part of the Oetker Collection, Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc has seen its legendary pool reconstructed over the decades—since the ’90s, it has sported a curving infinity edge—but the main draw for swimmers remains largely unchanged: that glorious Mediterranean view.