Five-star hotels in Antibes, from the old town to the Cap

Luxury hotels in Antibes: three settings, one commune

Antibes is larger than its walled centre suggests. The commune covers 26.48 km² and had 77,637 residents in 2023, and it takes in the resort of Juan-les-Pins and the peninsula of the Cap d'Antibes as well as the historic town. Anyone comparing luxury hotels in Antibes is really choosing between three settings under one town hall, and Hotel5only gives each its own page.

The hotel currently listed here among luxury hotels in Antibes is not inside the ramparts, so travellers searching for Antibes old town hotels at five-star level will not find one on this page today. What the page does offer is the town itself: what the old town, the museums and the port hold for a guest staying elsewhere in the commune, and how to move between them.

Vieil Antibes: from Greek Antipolis to the Safranier

Antibes began as Antipolis, a Greek colony founded in the fourth century BC by Phocaeans from Massalia, today's Marseille; the name means "the city opposite". Château Grimaldi has an equally layered past: a bishops' residence from 442 to 1385, then home to the Grimaldi family and later a royal governor's stronghold, it became the town hall in 1792 and a barracks in 1820.

Daily life in the old town gathers around the Cours Masséna, where the farmers' market is held under an iron hall dating from 1928. A few lanes away, the Safranier quarter has styled itself a "free commune" since 1966 and keeps its own traditions; its Villa Fontaine, given to the town by Marie-Jeanne Fontaine, hosts visiting artists. The Gothic Chapelle Saint-Bernardin, built in 1513 for a religious confraternity, has been a listed historic monument since 1989.

Writers settled here too: Nikos Kazantzakis owned a villa in the old town, and Graham Greene spent his later years in Antibes. The town also remembers a refusal. When Napoleon landed at nearby Golfe-Juan on 1 March 1815, the townspeople closed their gates to him.

Château Grimaldi, the first Picasso museum

In 1946 the curator Romuald Dor de la Souchère offered Pablo Picasso part of Château Grimaldi, then the Grimaldi Museum, as a studio. Picasso worked there for two months that autumn and left 23 paintings and 44 drawings in the town's keeping, among them La Joie de vivre and La Chèvre. In 1948 the collection gained 78 ceramics he had made at the Madoura workshop in neighbouring Vallauris.

The town had bought the château in 1925 and opened it as the Grimaldi Museum, and it was listed as a historic monument in 1928. In December 1966 it officially became the Picasso Museum, the first museum dedicated to the artist. The collection now reaches into 20th- and 21st-century art: a 2001 donation from the Hans Hartung and Anna-Eva Bergman Foundation opened two more rooms, and the terrace shows sculpture by Germaine Richier, Joan Miró, Bernard Pagès and Anne and Patrick Poirier.

Nicolas de Staël has his own place in the museum, which shows work from his stay in Antibes between September 1954 and March 1955. He set up his last studio in an apartment in the town and died there in March 1955.

Port Vauban, Fort Carré and the bastions

The tourist office traces the use of the Saint-Roch inlet as a harbour back to the Phocaean Greeks, but today's Port Vauban took its present form in the early 1970s. The port lists about 1,500 berths, and the tourist office describes it as the largest marina in Europe by tonnage. Since 1986 the Quai de Grande Plaisance, nicknamed the Billionaires' Quay, has berthed superyachts, which the port says can measure up to 160 metres.

Across the harbour, Fort Carré stands on a small peninsula and rises 26 metres above the sea at its highest point. Henri II ordered its construction in 1550 to guard the town, and Vauban later reinforced it. The fort was listed as a historic monument in 1906 and has been open to the public since 1998.

On the town side, the Bastion Saint-André, built by Vauban in 1698, has housed the archaeology museum since 1963, with a collection of more than 150 pieces. On the Bastion Saint-Jaume terrace, Jaume Plensa's eight-metre sculpture Nomade has watched over the town since 2010.

Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc: an Antibes address on the Cap

Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc stands at the far end of the Cap d'Antibes, on a rocky promontory facing the sea and surrounded by pines. Its main building is the former Villa Soleil, built between 1865 and 1870 in the Napoleon III style by Hippolyte de Villemessant, founder of Le Figaro, as a retreat for writers. The Italian hotelier Antoine Sella bought it in 1887 and opened the Grand Hôtel du Cap in 1889.

In 1914 Sella built the Eden-Roc pavilion, about 400 yards from the main house, as a tea room, and a saltwater pool was carved into the rock the same year. During the First World War the hotel served as an American Red Cross convalescent home, and F. Scott Fitzgerald later turned it into the Hôtel des Etrangers of Tender Is the Night. Rudolf August Oetker and Maja von Malaisé bought the property in 1969, and it took its present name in 1987.

The estate today combines the historic hotel, the Eden-Roc pavilion, the two-storey Les 2 Fontaines residence and private villas in the park, along with the 200-metre Grande Allée, a historic promenade with views of the Mediterranean, a rose garden and a wisteria that has flowered for more than 150 years. The Atout France register records 111 rooms, classified five-star on 3 June 2024, and as of 2026 the hotel holds the Palace distinction.

Dining ranges from Louroc, which held a MICHELIN star as of 2026, to Restaurant Eden-Roc on a terrace over the sea, Le Grill beside the saltwater pool and Giovanni's under a green pergola. Bar Bellini and La Rotonde are reserved for hotel guests. There are also a Dior spa, five clay tennis courts and cabanas under the pines.

Arriving in Antibes by air, rail and road

Antibes station is the commune's main railway stop and the only one where every type of train calls, including TGV inOui and Ouigo services on the Paris-Gare-de-Lyon to Nice route; Juan-les-Pins and Biot see regional TER trains only. By road, the A8 motorway, La Provençale, serves Antibes at exit 44.

Once in town, the Envibus network reaches every district of Antibes Juan-les-Pins and neighbouring towns such as Biot, Vallauris Golfe-Juan and Sophia Antipolis. Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc also runs a private limousine service with bilingual chauffeurs. Because the listed hotel's postal address and its position on the map tell different stories, our guide to checking a hotel's location and transport is a useful companion.

Cannes, Nice and the coast from an Antibes base

Its position between Cannes and Nice is Antibes' practical advantage. The coastal railway runs west from Antibes through Juan-les-Pins and Golfe-Juan-Vallauris towards Cannes, and east towards Nice; the table above gives the distances. The tourist office puts the Italian border about an hour's drive away.

Closer still, Vallauris, where Picasso made the ceramics he gave to the Château Grimaldi collection, and Biot both border the commune. For the wider coast across the Var and the Alpes-Maritimes, see our French Riviera page.

Two events frame the summer. Les Voiles d'Antibes brings classic yachts to Port Vauban (see the questions below), and in July the Jazz à Juan festival fills the pine grove at Juan-les-Pins, one stop west by train.