Few addresses on the Côte d'Azur carry the quiet authority of the Baie des Fourmis in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, where a blush-pink Belle Époque palace has stood at the water's edge since 1904. The Royal Riviera's six-storey facade — wrought-iron balconies, regular fenestration, the whole confection rendered in that particular dusty rose that the Riviera grand hotels seemed to decree as their collective uniform — gives directly onto a private pebble beach with a white-painted jetty, the kind of arrangement that no planning authority would permit today. The property was thoroughly reimagined in the early 2000s under the direction of interior designer Alberto Pinto, whose 94-room scheme split the accommodation between the historic building and a more contemporary pavilion addition, the two linked by gardens dense with umbrella pines and Canary Island palms. The design contrast between the two wings is visible in the rooms: Pinto's historic-building interiors favour pale cornflower-blue walls, gilded shell-framed mirrors, and louvred timber armoires in a palette drawn from sea and sky, while the newer pavilion rooms shift to a crisper register — ivory linen, dark-framed doors edged in turquoise, a yellow wool throw cutting across the bed like a stripe of Mediterranean sunlight. The pool terrace, set between the historic loggia with its candy-striped awnings and a view that drops toward open water, draws these two worlds together with white market umbrellas and limestone paving that keeps the atmosphere closer to a private estate than a hotel forecourt.

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