Cap d’Antibes. Hippolyte de Villemessant, founder of Le Figaro, built the Villa Soleil in 1869 as a retreat for writers — not as a hotel. He ran out of money; Paul de Fersen and Alexis de Plestcheyeff took the project on, and the Napoleon III building was inaugurated as the Grand Hôtel du Cap in February 1870 ⚑ the hotel opened properly in 1889 under the Italian hotelier Antoine Sella, who had bought it in 1887.
The house
The Riviera was a winter destination. The wealthy came to escape northern cold and left before the heat. Sella built a seawater pool to give guests a reason to stay through the summer, and in the 1920s Gerald and Sara Murphy — young Americans living in France — rented the hotel for an entire summer, which was then unheard of. They brought the Lost Generation with them: Fitzgerald, Hemingway, later Chagall sketching in the beachside cabanas.
Fitzgerald put it into Tender Is the Night as the Hôtel des Étrangers, and opened the novel with it: a large, proud, rose-coloured hotel, deferential palms cooling its façade, lately become a summer resort of notable and fashionable people. The Eden Roc pavilion went up 400 yards away in 1914.
Antoine Sella died in 1931 and his son André took the house on. It took no credit cards until 2006 and had no televisions until 2012; guests wired money ahead of arrival. It belongs to the Oetker Collection, alongside Le Bristol — the same family that holds the last privately owned Paris palace.
What distinguishes it
It was built for writers, by a newspaper proprietor. Villemessant founded Le Figaro and wanted a coastal refuge where writers could work as long as they liked. The most expensive hotel on the Riviera began as a residency programme.
It invented the Riviera summer. The coast was a winter escape; Sella’s seawater pool and the Murphys’ summer lease in the 1920s made the season. Two houses in this Library created a season that had not existed — Badrutt’s father made the alpine winter in 1864, and this one made the Mediterranean summer sixty years later.
A novel opens with it. Tender Is the Night, 1934, in the first lines. Fitzgerald called it the Hôtel des Étrangers and described exactly what it had become.
Cash only until 2006, no televisions until 2012. Guests wired money ahead of their stay. A refusal to modernise held for over a century, and abandoned within six years of itself.
Oetker holds it, and Le Bristol. The same family that owns the last privately held Paris palace. Against Brunei, Riyadh, Doha and LVMH elsewhere in this Library, the Oetkers are the largest owner in the trade still operating as a family.
The Cap is a summer house on a peninsula and prices accordingly; out of season much of what makes it is closed. It is also a hotel that has been photographed continuously for ninety years and behaves like one during the Cannes festival, when the amfAR gala fills it. A traveller wanting anonymity should choose a different cape.
Signature rooms and dates
Competitive landscape
Editorial note — Villemessant’s Villa Soleil of 1869, the February 1870 inauguration as the Grand Hôtel du Cap, Sella’s purchase in 1887 and opening in 1889, the 1914 Eden Roc pavilion, the Murphys’ summer lease, Fitzgerald’s Hôtel des Étrangers, André Sella from 1931, and the 2006 and 2012 changes checked against Wikipedia, Oetker Collection corporate history and independent accounts; verified August 2026. ⚑ The house dates itself variously to 1869, 1870 and 1889 depending on whether the villa, the inauguration or the hotel is meant; the register carries all three rather than choosing.
Sources
What the entry rests on. Each reference records the specific facts it supports, so a disputed line can be traced to the account it came from.