Anantara Plaza Nice: The Hotel That Arrived Before the Railway

THE STORY BEHIND THE HOTEL · FRENCH RIVIERA SEASON · 02/12

Before the railway delivered mass tourism to Nice, a local businessman had already bet on the city’s future. The hotel he opened in 1848 would change names, grow floors, survive fashion and re-emerge in 2022 as Anantara Plaza Nice—still watching Place Masséna from the same strategic corner.

1848: a hotel before the railway

Domenique Leyraud anticipated the transformation of Nice and commissioned Jean-Antoine Scoffier to design a neoclassical hotel. The three-storey Hotel de France opened in 1848, more than a decade before rail made the Riviera broadly accessible. Its premise was bold but simple: comfort should stand where the new city, the gardens and the sea were about to meet.

Charles Dalmas redraws the corner

The present façade owes much to Charles Dalmas, who enlarged and remodelled the property after its 1913 sale. Reopening around 1918–19 as Hotel Plaza et de France, it acquired a Belle Époque presence suited to Avenue de Verdun. Two additional floors arrived in 1960; later interventions culminated in a restoration led by David Collins Studio, Jean-Paul Gomis and TBC Interiorismo, balancing historic envelope with lighter Mediterranean interiors.

From Hôtel de France to Anantara

The hotel reopened as Hotel Plaza in 1900, changed ownership before the First World War, expanded, and then spent decades adapting to Nice’s shift from winter resort to year-round city. The Livieri, Stellardo and Boscolo eras each left a layer. Covivio acquired the property in 2019; an agreement with NH Hotel Group led to the Anantara relaunch in December 2022.

Raymond Poincaré’s Nice address

The official history documents Poincaré’s connection and recalls another director whose life took a novelistic turn when she married an Italian prince. These are better clues to the hotel’s allure than an inflated celebrity list: the Plaza operated as a semi-private stage where public status and personal lives overlapped.

Growth, closure and a blurred identity

Its history is not a single uninterrupted golden age. Ownership changed repeatedly, additions altered the silhouette and the building passed through periods when its identity was less distinct. The long closure before the Anantara opening was therefore more than cosmetic: it asked whether a nineteenth-century address could become relevant without being turned into a replica of its past.

Returning the Belle Époque façade to the city

The 2022 transformation retained the Belle Époque exterior and introduced a new interior language of travertine, curves, light woods and Riviera colour. The aim was not archaeological reconstruction but continuity: a historic shell made legible to contemporary travellers, with public rooms opening more confidently toward the square and sea.

Nice from the rooftop

There are 151 rooms and suites, the rooftop SEEN by Olivier, Les Colonnades, an Anantara Spa and access to Ruhl Plage. The rooftop is the decisive contemporary move: it raises the guest above traffic and restores the geographic logic that first made the site valuable—the gardens, rooftops and blue line of the Mediterranean in one frame.

The restored hotel in motion

A luxury base inside the city

Choose it for central Nice rather than seclusion. The hotel suits a traveller who wants Place Masséna, the Promenade, Old Nice, shopping and the tram within minutes, while returning to a full-service luxury base. The reward is urban energy with a Riviera horizon, not a resort isolated from the city.

Place Masséna at the door

Anantara Plaza Nice stands at 12 Avenue de Verdun, beside Jardin Albert Ier and Place Masséna. The seafront and Vieux Nice are a short walk; the airport tram stops nearby. Rooftop, beach and restaurant schedules can change seasonally.

Osama Samaha
Editor-in-Chief — OUISTARS Travel