Grand-Hôtel du Cap-Ferrat

The Grand-Hôtel du Cap-Ferrat, A Four Seasons Hotel is a famous five star luxury resort hotel, situated in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat in the French Riviera. The hotel obtained the "Palace de France" distinction, granted by the French government for its excellence in service in 2011. The highest ranking of all the many “palaces” that sprang up all over the French Riviera, the Grand-Hôtel du Cap-Ferrat overlooks the sea from the furthermost tip of the peninsula from which it takes its name.

At the turn of the 20th century, Cap-Ferrat was little more than a wilderness of rocks and dense scrubland, vegetation that only changed as real estate began to develop there. At the end of the 19th century, piece by piece, King Leopold II of Belgium purchased the peninsula’s only wooded area, and then proceeded to expand his estate by buying up most of the vacant land around.

Shortly before 1900, Leopold sold part of his property to a company founded by a Mr. Péretmère, the son of a coachman from the north who had some savings of his own. He reserved six and a half hectares of the land for the hotel, whose construction began in 1908 with the two wings built at an open angle to each other, then the following year a loggia dining room and the large, central Rotonde were added. By then, the building had its final, distinctive silhouette, remarkably simple for the time. A little later, the Grand-Hôtel was bought by Madame Ferras, a widow and the grandmother of famous violinist Christian Ferras.

The First World War broke out shortly after the new owner’s arrival and the hotel became a hospital. In 1922, two professional hoteliers, Messrs Henri Dehouve and André Voyenne, but acquired a majority shareholding and took over the running of the company. They were to remain in charge for over twenty years, a period marked not only by the Great Depression and the Second World War, but also by a complete revolution in holidaying habits.

Since it first became known in the second half of the 19th century, and up until the 1930s, the French Riviera remained almost exclusively a luxury destination. Most visitors were either wealthy individuals of independent means or royalty from northern countries, in particular England and Russia. They came only in winter and for long visits. Queen Victoria and her court, numerous aristocratic families, Princess Louise, the Duke of Connaught, President Paul Deschanel and many other politicians of the French 3rd Republic, the pianist Marguerite Long, the violinist Jacques Thibaud, and movie stars such as Charles Boyer, Charlie Chaplin and many others were to follow.

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Wikipedia