Clinging to the cliffs of Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, 333 metres above the Mediterranean, Maybourne’s French outpost returns for the 2026 season with a Vongerichten rooftop, a beach club with Cannes pedigree and the Riviera’s most serious wellness club.

You can sum up a stay at The Maybourne Riviera in one word: blue. Better still, three. Blue on blue on blue. The blue of the sea, stretching unbroken to the horizon. The blue of the sky, cloudless for 300 days a year. And the pale blue threaded through the hotel itself – striped loungers, washed linens, soft-hued chairs – so that a summery blue haze seems to follow you from balcony to breakfast to pool and back again.

The source of all this blue sits 333 metres above the Mediterranean, on a rocky spur high over Roquebrune-Cap-Martin – in France, though only just, with Monaco directly beneath and Italy within sight. The hotel began life as the Vista Palace, a mid-century address quietly treasured for its view; in 2021, Maybourne – the group behind Claridge’s, The Connaught, The Berkeley and The Emory – reopened it as its first French property, rebuilt almost from scratch and angled so that every single room faces the sea. It is now, for our money, the finest hotel on this coastline. But we’ll come to that.

“You can see three countries from here,” said the impossibly suave guest experience manager, Rachid, who showed us to our suite, sweeping an arm across the wraparound balcony – Monaco directly below, France all around us, and beyond Menton, the hazy rise of the Italian coastline. He was underselling it. From this eyrie the sea and sky merge into one vast, uninterrupted field of blue, punctuated only by the high-rises of Monte Carlo, the grand villas of Cap Martin and – a detail that undid us entirely – the orange clay courts of the Monte-Carlo Country Club. A month earlier we had watched the Monte-Carlo Masters on television; the weekend before, the Grand Prix. Now here was the whole theatre laid out beneath our balcony, close enough to trace the harbour chicane. (The delicious irony, incidentally: the Country Club sits just over the border, so the Monte-Carlo Masters is played in France – in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, to be precise.)

The view dominates everything here, as it should. But the hotel holds its own against it – which, given the competition, is the highest compliment we can pay.

The location – 9/10

Roquebrune-Cap-Martin itself deserves your attention: a medieval hilltop village of cobbled lanes, a 10th-century castle and a 1,000-year-old olive tree that still fruits. This is arguably the most architecturally charged commune on the Mediterranean: directly below, on the shoreline, sits Eileen Gray’s E-1027, the 1929 modernist villa that changed domestic architecture, alongside Le Corbusier’s tiny cabanon, where he summered until his final swim in these waters in 1965. He is buried in the cemetery up the hill. A hotel of this ambition, in this postcode, is not decorating a view – it is joining a lineage.

Nice airport is just over half an hour away; Monaco is 10 minutes down the corniche. It’s not a walkable hotel, so rent a car, prepare to use taxis or make use of the hotel’s complimentary shuttle – going on the hour to Monte Carlo and back.

The design – 10/10

French architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte kept only the Vista Palace’s original triangular footprint and composed something entirely new around it: white, mineral, graphic, tiered down the cliff face like a stack of light boxes, with suites cut into the rock itself. Step inside and the blue takes over again – it pours through walls of glass and settles into the interiors, where Irish designer Bryan O’Sullivan – Maybourne’s designer of choice, whose studio is behind The Berkeley Bar and a swathe of Claridge’s – joins Rigby & Rigby and creative director Michelle Wu in conjuring a soft, oceanic register of bouclé, cream, pale blue stripes and blushes of pink. It reads as ’50s and ’60s Riviera – Gray’s world, refracted – without a whisper of pastiche. Jean Mus’s Mediterranean gardens do the rest.

The rooms – 10/10

Every room faces the sea; there is no bad ticket. There are 13 to choose from – from sea-view studios, duplexes, garden rooms and pool suites to wraparound panoramic suites and whole floors. All are bright and full of light, the sunshine and all that blue pouring in through floor-to-ceiling glass, while the interiors keep to soft pastels – creams, pale blues, blushes – deliberately quiet so nothing competes with what’s outside. The effect is Maybourne 2.0: comfortable, chic and modern with a knowing retro undertow. Our Panoramic Suite came with that wraparound balcony and a bedroom arranged so the view is the first and last thing you see.

The terraces are the star of the show – every room has one, and most come with their own blue sun loungers (popping, naturally, against the blue on blue on blue), so breakfast, aperitifs and entire afternoons can unfold without ever going down to the pool.

Then there is the detail, where Maybourne’s London polish shows. The minibar’s snacks and soft drinks are complimentary; the coffee is local, decanted into Nespresso pods. A baked treat from the hotel’s pâtisserie awaits every arrival. Wardrobes are genuinely generous and come with a garment steamer and a full Dyson hair kit; bathrooms are stocked with Surrenne, the house wellness brand, plus every travelling amenity you might have forgotten. There is even a yoga mat. Settling into a hotel room usually involves a call or two down to reception for something missing; here, for the first time in memory, we never picked up the phone once. Nobody currently understands what the 2026 traveller actually wants better than this group, and it shows in every drawer.

Food & drink – 9/10

Breakfast at Riviera Restaurant may be the most beautiful in existence: out on the balcony under umbrellas, among pale blue seats and blue-trimmed furniture, blue sky above, blue sea below, Monaco glittering in between – the room’s soothing, sea-washed calm somehow amplifying the view rather than competing with it. (Taken on your own terrace, it is arguably better still.) The offering matches the setting – distinctly international with a French–Mediterranean accent, and a quiet relief for anyone travelling with preferences: fresh juices and smoothies, matcha, eggs any way you like, and everything the health-conscious would expect of a top London hotel, simply transplanted to the Riviera.

By night the restaurant becomes the hotel’s hub, the cool sea air drifting through as Bryan O’Sullivan’s blue-washed room draws a young, eclectic crowd from well beyond the hotel – amberjack crudo with Provençal white peach, seabass, whole roasted duck.

New on the rooftop is abc kitchens riviera, Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s plant-leaning concept fresh from New York and The Emory, served with a 360-degree panorama that no Manhattan sibling can match. La Piscine handles poolside days with wood-fired pizzas from Neapolitan chef Nunzio, a proper grill and house gelato, while Le 300 – named for its altitude above the sea – is impossibly glamorous after dark, channelling the pedigree of Maybourne’s celebrated London bars (the Connaught Bar was twice named the world’s best) into cocktails built on foraged Riviera botanicals.

Surrenne – 10/10

Born at The Emory in Belgravia and arriving here in 2025, Surrenne is the most serious wellness proposition on this coastline – three floors of longevity science, Technogym kit, reformer and Lagree classes, spin, Biologique Recherche facials, cold plunge and thermal circuit, with two of its four studios open entirely to the terrace so you practise to birdsong and that blue. New for 2026 is a programme of three-night guided Retreats (from EUR 3,400 plus room), built around breathwork, coastal walks, sea swims and nutritionist Rose Ferguson’s anti-inflammatory menu.

Pool & beach – 9/10

The infinity pool sits just below the main building, its orange loungers and parasols popping against all that blue – and, mercifully for those of us arriving from the Gulf, the water is kept genuinely warm rather than at the bracing temperatures Europe usually considers character-building. Down at sea level, the hotel’s beach club is now La Môme Riviera, imported last summer from Cannes by brothers Ugo and Antoine Lecorché: crudo, royal crab salad and prawn linguine by day, flame-grilled fish and DJ sets by night. We ran out of days before we made it down – reason enough to return – but note that it is open to non-residents, so book your lounger ahead.

Getting around

The hotel runs a complimentary hourly shuttle to Monte Carlo, dropping and collecting beside the Hôtel Hermitage at Casino Square – genuinely useful. Taxis and Ubers work, if occasionally on Riviera time, and parking is limited: the price of a location this dramatic. Use it as a base for Èze, Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat and Menton, the last French town before Italy and pleasingly Italian for it.

The service – 9/10

Service runs on the same current of quiet anticipation. The concierge team works brilliantly over WhatsApp – moving dinner reservations, booking taxis, producing recommendations with the assurance of people who are genuinely connected along this coast. Many of the staff are from the area, their skills honed in Paris or just down the hill in Monaco, and it tells: local knowledge delivered with grand-hotel precision.

The verdict – 10/10

Everything about The Maybourne Riviera is elevation – physical, in those 333 metres of cliff; historical, in the modernist company it keeps; and tonal, floating serenely above the scrum of the summer coast. You feel miles from the world here, suspended in blue, looking down on some of the most desired real estate on earth. For our money, this is the finest address on the French Riviera – and in 2026, with Surrenne in full stride and La Môme at the water’s edge, it has never been better.

The Maybourne Riviera is open for the 2026 season until 13 November; rooms from EUR 800 (AED 4,200); maybourne.com

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