Hôtel du Couvent

The nuns of the Order of Saint Clare moved into their convent on the slope of Castle Hill in the seventeenth century and stayed for the better part of three hundred years, until the house was emptied in the twentieth and left to the weather. In June 2024 it reopened as Hôtel du Couvent, after a restoration that took the developer Valéry Grégo and his company Perseus more than a decade, inside the old town of Nice.

History

The convent of the Clarisses was founded in the 1600s, when Nice belonged to the Duchy of Savoy, on a site between the medieval streets of the old town and the castle rock above. The sisters kept gardens on the terraces, a chapel and a cloister. The order left in the twentieth century, the buildings passed to the city, and various schemes for them came and went. Grégo, whose earlier hotels included Le Pigalle in Paris, took on the site in the early 2010s. The works uncovered the convent's original vaults, cisterns and terraces, and the project grew from a hotel into something closer to a small village, with the gardens, baths and shops open to the public as well as to guests.

Architecture and design

The restoration kept the convent's plan: a chapel, a cloister, long corridors and cells, with the gardens stepping up the hill behind in terraces of olive, citrus and vegetables. The materials are lime plaster, stone, terracotta and timber, with very little added decoration. Festen Architecture and Studio Mumbai, the practice of the Indian architect Bijoy Jain, worked on the buildings and interiors, and the result reads as restrained to the point of austerity: whitewashed walls, linen, oak, iron. The old chapel is used for events and concerts.

Rooms and suites

The 88 rooms occupy the former cells and dormitories, and keep their proportions: high ceilings, deep windows, plain walls. Some look into the cloister, some over the rooftops of the old town towards the sea, some onto the terraced gardens. Furniture is simple and made for the house.

Dining

The hotel has several places to eat rather than one restaurant. A refectory serves meals from a wood-fired oven at long tables; a second room does pasta and vegetables from the gardens; a bakery and a cafe open early onto the street; there is a wine cellar and a bar. Much of the produce comes from the convent's own terraces and from the Cours Saleya market a few streets away. An apothecary sells herbal preparations made in the house.

Wellness

The baths are the feature that sets the hotel apart. Built below the gardens, they follow the Roman sequence of frigidarium, tepidarium and caldarium, with a cold plunge, a warm pool, a hot room and a steam room, plus treatment rooms and a gym. Access is for guests and for the public on a reserved basis. There is also an outdoor pool in the gardens.

Weddings and events

The chapel, the cloister and the garden terraces are used for weddings, dinners and private events, and the hotel can be taken over in full. Meetings use the smaller rooms off the cloister; the hotel does not have a conventional conference wing.

Location

The convent stands on the eastern edge of Vieux Nice, at the foot of Castle Hill, above Place Rossetti and the steps up to the castle park. The Cours Saleya market, the cathedral and the Promenade des Anglais are a few minutes' walk. Nice-Ville station is twenty minutes on foot or ten by taxi; Nice Côte d'Azur airport is about 25 minutes by car, or by tram and train. The port and the coast road to Villefranche are just beyond the hill. As a luxury hotel in Nice it is set inside the old town rather than on the seafront, which is the whole difference.