Luxury five-star hotels in Cannes, the festival city

From Aegitna to the festival town

Cannes started on the small hill now called Le Suquet. By the 2nd century BC the Ligurian Oxybii had a settlement here known as Aegitna, and the medieval castle of the monks of Lérins, with its square tower, still crowns the old town. At its foot, fishing boats still moor in the Old Port, today as in the past.

The resort began by accident. In December 1834 Lord Henry Brougham, travelling to Italy with his daughter Éléonore-Louise, was turned back at the border because of a cholera epidemic and stopped in Cannes instead. He bought land west of Le Suquet and laid the first stone of the Villa Éléonore-Louise, the town's first holiday villa, on 10 August 1835. English aristocrats followed him and built winter residences of their own.

The twentieth century added a second identity. The Cannes Film Festival was founded in 1946, and the present Palais des Festivals et des Congrès opened in December 1982 on the site of the municipal casino. Cannes counted 74,350 inhabitants in 2023: a modest town for the crowds its calendar draws.

Luxury hotels in Cannes and the festival calendar

The Palais des Festivals presents Cannes as the first French business destination outside Paris, with more than 70 business-to-business events a year, over 300,000 professional accreditations and some 340 days of activity. For anyone comparing luxury hotels in Cannes, the dates of those events deserve as much attention as the season, because the largest bring tens of thousands of participants into a compact town.

The main fixtures return in the same months each year. MIPIM, the international market for real-estate professionals, gathers about 20,000 participants from 90 countries in March. The Festival de Cannes follows, usually in May. Cannes Lions, the creativity and advertising festival held since 1954, brings more than 15,000 participants from over 100 countries in June. In September the Cannes Yachting Festival spreads across the Old Port, Port Canto and the Palais, with about 700 boats and some 56,000 visitors expected. Autumn is trade-show season: the TFWA World Exhibition for the duty-free and travel-retail industry usually straddles the end of September and the start of October, and MIPCOM, the market for television and audiovisual content, follows in October.

Leisure events fill the gaps. Every summer for more than 50 years, the Festival d'Art Pyrotechnique has staged an international fireworks competition over the bay, on evenings spread across July and August (six in 2026). In late February the Festival International des Jeux turns the Palais into a games hall for more than 100,000 visitors, and April brings Canneseries, the international television series festival founded in 2018.

Where to stay in Cannes: La Croisette and the centre

For most visitors, deciding where to stay in Cannes comes down to the seafront or the streets just behind it. La Croisette runs for about 2.5 km along the Bay of Cannes, from the Palais des Festivals past Port Canto to the Pointe de la Croisette, framed by pines and palm trees. On one side lie sand and beach restaurants under white wooden huts, with the promenade's blue chairs available to passers-by; on the other stand the façades of the grand hotels and a run of luxury boutiques. The boulevard is recorded in France's general inventory of cultural heritage.

The Palais itself stands at 1 Boulevard de la Croisette, east of the Old Port. Designed in a modernist style by Sir Hubert Bennett and François Druet, it covers 35,000 square metres and holds 18 auditoriums, the largest seating 2,300. More than 140 handprints of film stars are moulded into the ground outside.

Behind the seafront, the city centre carries on the shopping, from the luxury houses of the Carré d'Or to the big names of Rue d'Antibes, with inviting terraces in between. Both listed hotels keep the Palais and the beaches close: the Martinez on the Croisette itself, Five Seas in the centre just behind it.

Le Suquet, the Old Port and Forville market

The tourist office describes Le Suquet as the oldest district of Cannes. Its cobbled streets, Rue Saint-Antoine and Rue du Suquet among them, climb past a small fountain to the church of Notre-Dame-d'Espérance and the castle of the Lérins monks, and the top of the hill gives a panoramic view over the whole town.

The castle and its square tower now house the Musée des Explorations du Monde, formerly the Musée de la Castre. Its collections run from Orientalist objects from 19th-century Iran and Inuit figures carved from walrus bone to weapons and ornaments of hair or shell from Oceania and antiquities from the Mediterranean.

Below the hill, the Quai Laubeuf in the Old Port is the boarding point for the islands. Also at the foot of the hill, the Marché Forville, the town's historic market in an orange building, sells local produce every morning from Tuesday to Sunday and turns into a flea market on Mondays. The tourist office presents Le Suquet as the historic, cultural and gourmet quarter of Cannes, and its lanes make the natural evening walk after a day on the Croisette.

The Lérins Islands: fort, forest and monastery

The two Lérins Islands lie in the bay off Cannes, and boats leave from Quai Laubeuf in the Old Port; the tourist office puts the crossing at 15 to 20 minutes. Each island has its own character, so it is worth deciding in advance which suits the day.

Sainte-Marguerite, the larger, is about 3,200 metres long and 900 metres wide, and a walk around it covers roughly 9 km. Its Fort Royal holds the cell of the mysterious Man in the Iron Mask and a museum of archaeological remains from the Roman era. The island's state forest is classified as a directed biological reserve, and an underwater eco-museum off its shore can be explored with a mask and snorkel.

Saint-Honorat, about 1,500 metres long and 400 metres wide, is a private island belonging to Cistercian monks; monks have lived here since AD 410. Visitors can see the abbey church and the monastery tower, a medieval fortress above the sea, and the monastery shop sells the wines, liqueurs and other products the community makes.

Five Seas Hôtel Cannes

Five Seas Hôtel Cannes sits in the town centre, just steps from La Croisette and the Palais des Festivals by its own description. The Atout France register lists it with 45 rooms and a five-star classification dated 25 October 2021. The register gives its address on Rue du Bivouac Napoléon.

The hotel's focus is its roof. Le Roof is a panoramic restaurant serving revisited classics of French bistronomy, with a lounge bar in the same setting that the hotel calls lively and convivial. The roof terrace has an infinity pool with views over the city, and swimming there is reserved for hotel guests. Spa by Sothys adds treatments in what the hotel describes as a soothing atmosphere.

Deluxe Rooms have a king-size bed or twin beds, a walk-in wardrobe, a complimentary minibar, a Nespresso machine, air conditioning and a bathroom with a shower or bathtub. Room service runs 24 hours a day, families can ask for baby cots, highchairs, changing tables and bottle warmers, and pets are accepted on request for an extra charge. To get around town, guests can use the hotel's private golf buggy; for arrival, the hotel points to the nearby train station and bike paths.

Hôtel Martinez, the Art Deco palace of La Croisette

Hôtel Martinez stands at 73 Boulevard de la Croisette. Emmanuel Martinez, who had managed hotels in London and Paris, bought the Villa Marie-Thérèse on the site in September 1927 and opened his hotel on 20 February 1929. The Atout France register lists 410 rooms with a five-star classification dated 3 June 2024, and the hotel is one of the Palaces on the official list Atout France updated on 2 June 2026.

Its ivory Art Deco façade looks over the Croisette. The MICHELIN Guide credits the designer Pierre-Yves Rochon with interiors that update the original style rather than depart from it, and the hotel describes its rooms in the colours of the Riviera, with white lacquered furniture and touches of sky blue and pale yellow.

La Palme d'Or holds one MICHELIN star (as of 2026). The Guide describes a dining room panelled like a yacht from Hollywood's golden era and filled with film props, where chef Christophe Nannoni cooks under the direction of Jean Imbert. The Martinez Bar revisits the 1930s in a setting designed by Rémi Tessier, with DJ sets on Friday and Saturday nights, and La Plage du Martinez serves Mediterranean cooking by the sea. The garden has a pool, and L'Oasis du Martinez is the spa by Carita. The hotel gives Nice Côte d'Azur airport as 29 km away and Cannes station as 2 km.

Hôtel Carlton Cannes, the Belle Époque landmark on La Croisette

Hôtel Carlton Cannes stands at 58 Boulevard de la Croisette. The Atout France register lists 369 rooms with a five-star classification dated 25 June 2024. A first part opened on 30 January 1911, and a wing built in 1912 and 1913 doubled the hotel's size and gave it its present form; its façade, roofs and domes, the main hall, the Grand Salon and two staircases have been protected as a Historical Monument since 29 August 1989. In 1954 Alfred Hitchcock shot the key scenes of 'To Catch a Thief' here with Grace Kelly and Cary Grant.

The hotel reopened on 13 March 2023 after a two-year makeover by the architect Richard Lavelle, with interiors by Tristan Auer. Rooms and suites face the sea, the garden patio or the town, and the Palais des Festivals lies at the end of the view from the sea-view suites. La Prairie treatments and a 450 m² fitness club are at Le C Club, the Turkish restaurant Rüya looks to the Anatolian coast, and the hotel dates its Carlton Beach Club to 1930, when it obtained a plot in front of the building from the town and opened what it calls the first private beach in Cannes.

Getting to Cannes: airports, rail and road

Most international visitors land at Nice Côte d'Azur Airport, which the tourist office places 27 km from Cannes and less than 30 minutes away by road. Cannes-Mandelieu Airport, about 15 minutes from the centre, is used for tourism and business aviation.

By rail, Cannes is served by TGV high-speed trains, and TER regional trains connect the towns of the Côte d'Azur with the stations of Cannes and Cannes-La-Bocca. By road, the A8 motorway has exit 41 for La Bocca and exit 42 for Mougins and the town centre. Arrivals by sea use the Marina du Vieux Port on the Promenade de la Pantiero. Before booking around a big event, our guide on how to check a hotel's location and transport explains what to look for.

Beyond Cannes: hill villages, perfume and the coast

Cannes makes a practical base for the western Côte d'Azur. Inland, Mougins keeps its medieval spiral of lanes on a hilltop about 15 minutes away; Picasso spent the last years of his life there. Grasse, about 12 km to the north, is the perfume town, and TER trains run there directly from Cannes on the branch line through Cannes-La-Bocca.

Along the coast to the east lie Antibes and Nice, both linked to Cannes by TER regional trains. For more five-star addresses along this shore and in its hinterland, see the French Riviera collection.