Hôtel Barrière Le Majestic Cannes

Stand on the steps of the Palais des Festivals, turn your back to the red carpet, and the white Art Deco front across the road is the Majestic. Hôtel Barrière Le Majestic Cannes opened in 1926 at 10 boulevard de la Croisette, at the western end of the seafront, and no hotel in the town is closer to the festival hall. During the twelve days in May its lobby, bar and beach function as an annexe of the Palais.

History

The hotel was built by the architect Théo Petit, who had designed the Normandy in Deauville for the Barrière group's founder François André in 1912. The Majestic replaced the Villa Rouge and opened in February 1926 as Cannes was becoming a winter and then a summer resort for the British and American rich. The Barrière family has owned it since, through Lucien Barrière, who gave the group its name, and his daughter Diane Barrière-Desseigne, whose name the group's spas carry.

Two expansions changed its scale. A new wing in 1999 raised the count of rooms and suites, and in 2010 a further wing on the western side added rooms, a ballroom and two penthouse suites on the top floor, each with a private terrace and pool. The building is listed in the general inventory of French cultural heritage.

Architecture and design

Petit's building is a symmetrical Art Deco block with a central bay, white render and ironwork balconies, and the two later wings follow its lines so that the whole reads as one facade along the Croisette. Inside, the decoration is in the Barrière manner, with marble floors, chandeliers and a long bar off the lobby. The garden at the front, between the hotel and the boulevard, holds the outdoor pool, shielded from the road by palms.

Rooms and suites

There are 349 rooms including 80 suites. Sea-view rooms face the Palais and the bay across the Croisette; the two penthouses, named Majestic and Christian Dior, occupy the top floor of the 2010 wing with terraces running the width of the building.

Dining

Fouquet's Cannes, the Riviera outpost of the Paris brasserie, serves in a room and on a terrace facing the Croisette, with a menu overseen like its parent by Pierre Gagnaire. The beach restaurant on the private beach across the road serves lunch through the season; it was relaunched in 2019 as BFire with Mauro Colagreco of Mirazur. The bar in the lobby is the festival's late-night meeting place.

Wellness

Spa Diane Barrière has treatment rooms, a hammam and a fitness room. The heated outdoor pool is in the front garden, and the hotel's private beach, with loungers and a restaurant, is directly across the Croisette.

Weddings and events

The Majestic has fourteen event rooms with a largest capacity of around 400, including the ballroom added in 2010, used for the festival's official dinners, for congresses linked to the Palais across the road and for weddings. Receptions are also held in the garden around the pool and on the beach. Capacities per room beyond the maximum are not in our source material.

Location

Number 10 boulevard de la Croisette is at the western end of the seafront, with the Palais des Festivals opposite, the old port and Le Suquet five minutes on foot and Cannes station ten minutes inland. Nice-Côte d'Azur airport is about 25 kilometres away. Among luxury hotels in Cannes it is the one that belongs to the festival rather than the beach.