Hôtel Martinez

The Croisette ends, for most purposes, at number 73. Hôtel Martinez occupies a full block of the Cannes seafront with the longest facade on the boulevard, and during the film festival each May its steps and its beach are where the industry does business. Emmanuel Martinez, an Italian hotelier who had run the Carlton further along the same boulevard, opened it in February 1929, eight months before the crash.

History

Martinez built on the site of the Villa Marie-Thérèse, once the property of the Dukes of Vallombrosa, and his hotel was the largest on the Riviera at opening. The Art Deco building had its own beach club from the outset. The Second World War and a long legal dispute over its ownership followed, and the hotel passed through several hands before Concorde Hotels, the Taittinger family group, ran it for decades from the 1980s, keeping the Martinez name and adding the Palme d'Or restaurant in 1985.

In 2013 Hyatt took over management and the hotel became Grand Hyatt Cannes Hôtel Martinez. A full renovation led by Pierre-Yves Rochon closed much of the house in 2017 and 2018, after which it joined The Unbound Collection by Hyatt under its original name. The hotel holds the French Palace distinction.

Architecture and design

The 1929 building is a long symmetrical block of seven storeys in white render, with Art Deco ironwork on the balconies and the hotel's name in period lettering on the facade. Rochon's renovation kept the Deco vocabulary and returned the public rooms to a 1930s palette of pale wood, brass and cream, with a lobby that opens straight through to the garden and the pool. The penthouse floor was rebuilt with terraces running the width of the building.

Rooms and suites

The Martinez has more than 400 rooms and suites, the largest count of any hotel on the Croisette. Sea-facing rooms look across the boulevard to the bay and the Lérins islands; the two penthouse suites on the top floor have terraces with plunge pools and views over the whole seafront.

Dining

La Palme d'Or, on the first floor facing the sea, has held two Michelin stars for many years under Christian Sinicropi, who started in the kitchen in the 1990s and has led it since 2007. The restaurant takes its name from the festival's prize and its dining room looks onto the boulevard. Le Jardin du Martinez is the garden restaurant around the pool, and La Plage du Martinez is the beach restaurant across the road, open from spring to autumn. The bar, with live music in season, is the festival's informal meeting point.

Wellness

The spa on the ground floor has treatment rooms, a hammam and a fitness room; the outdoor pool sits in the garden behind the hotel, and the private beach across the Croisette has sunloungers and its own restaurant.

Weddings and events

The Martinez has the largest event capacity on the Croisette, with a ballroom and a group of meeting rooms on the ground and first floors, used throughout the festival season for press junkets and dinners and the rest of the year for congresses attached to the Palais des Festivals. Weddings are held in the salons, the garden and on the beach. The hotel publishes capacities for each room; they are not in our source material and are not stated here.

Location

At 73 boulevard de la Croisette, the hotel is at the eastern end of the seafront, about fifteen minutes on foot from the Palais des Festivals and the old port. Nice-Côte d'Azur airport is 25 kilometres away, around 40 minutes by car, and Cannes station is a ten-minute walk inland. For a luxury hotel in Cannes it is the one most used as a congress base.