The story of France’s greatest hotel – where Burton and Taylor had an affair and Picasso was a regular

This article is destined for the well-bred, the well-heeled and the cultured among readers. That includes almost everybody, so we all know that, right now, we should be on the French Riviera. It’s where British people of quality spent the winter months from the late 18th century through to the mid-20th – and later than that for the brighter among them.

It’s where we should still go now, in early 2023. Granted, France has its strikes – pension reform plans have lately ignited workshy Bolsheviks – and may even compete with the UK for the reach and diversity of its industrial action.

But the Riviera will provide refuge. They generally suspect militancy down there. And, weather-wise, though you will not be bathing on the Côte-d’Azur – unless you’re one of the all-year-round lunatics – you may be lunching on an outdoor terrace.

The next question is: where, exactly? The Riviera is awash with opulent hotels but – here’s the point - only the Hotel Negresco on Nice’s Promenade des Anglais has grandeur. It is the most memorable hotel not only on the Côte-d’Azur but also in France as a whole. Celebrating its 110th birthday this year, the place traces exactly a line between cultural magnificence and bonkers excess.

Other palace hotels have blokes with suits and shades at the entry. At one, recently, my credentials were checked as if they were expecting The Jackal. The Negresco, by contrast, has tall fellows in costumes that might have been considered lavish in the 18th century: frock coats, red knee breeches, plumed postillon hats.

They smile – there’s not much choice when you’re dressed like that – even if you’re not a world leader, a Saudi prince or a bloke from Coldplay.

Behind these chaps is a treasure house, with some 6,000 works of art which structure the hotel without turning it into a museum. This is a place for living – raffishly, if required – and revelling in one’s success. Right by the entrance, for instance, the Salon Versailles is studded with notable items.

These include one of only three versions of Hyacinth Rigaud’s portrait of Louis XIV en majesté, the one where the Sun King has apparently shouldered all his bedding. But I sat around there as I sit around anywhere, though maybe just a little bit straighter.

All this, and more, has been the work of one woman, the flame-haired Madame Jeanne Augier, the most idiosyncratic of hoteliers. Mme Augier died at 95 in 2019. She had been one of a very few independent owners of luxury hotels, a woman of unambiguous taste and character forceful enough to remove Nikita Khrushchev’s hand from her knee in the hotel bar.

Everybody else you have ever heard of has passed through the Negresco without unduly impressing the boss. Her interest remained elsewhere – in creating a showpiece “exalting” (her word) French art, culture and refinement. Also, crucially, a happy spot for animals.

The Negresco opened in 1913, the project of Romanian ex-restaurant director, Henri Negresco. He established it as a point of reference on the Côte-d’Azur, its façade white and imperious rising to a pink dome said to have been inspired by the breasts of the architect’s mistress. (Then again, they say that about most domes in France; that’s the French for you.)

The opening came just in time for the hotel to close for the Great War, when it operated as a military hospital.

Inter-war, the Negresco got on with high society though, in 1927, things didn’t turn out so well for Isadora Duncan. Directly outside the hotel, the dancer caught her scarf in the wheel of her open-topped motorcar. She was killed instantly as the car set off. Lloyd George had a happier time, as did Agatha Christie, Rudolph Valentino, Churchill and the kings and queens of almost everywhere.

That said, by 1957, the Negresco was at a low ebb. The Augiers bought it, mainly because it was the only building in Nice with a lift big enough to take the wheelchair of Mme Augier’s handicapped mother. Owning a hotel was a secondary consideration.

With no experience, Mme Augier began bending the business to her taste. She chucked out the 1950s orthodoxy of neutral colours for bright wall-hangings, colour, period furniture and art, acquired over years of auction rooms and antiques deals. She mixed and matched works from contemporary artists with others ranging back over five centuries.

Under the glass roof of the vast, round Salon Royal, a 17,000-piece Baccarat chandelier the size of a helicopter (made for Czar Nicolas II; the Kremlin has its twin) oversees Corinthian columns and 18th-century portraits of be-wigged blokes who all look like Brian May but also an exuberant yellow bathing girl by sculptor Niki de Saint-Phalle. Elegance and effervescence are in balance.

Famous guests rolled in. Picasso was a regular, as were Chagall and Dali, who visited with his cheetah, for Mme Augier loved animals and let most in. Among humans, polymath Jean Cocteau was a favourite. As Mme Augier once said: “At dinner with him, I always resented the arrival of dessert because that meant the meal was almost over – and he was such a brilliant talker.” Romy Schneider and Alain Delon pursued an allegedly rambunctious affair on the premises, as did Burton and Taylor.

Meanwhile, US president Harold Truman was, according to Mme A, “a perfect gentleman” as, I’m sure, was Clint Eastwood. Upstairs on a fourth-floor balcony, photographer Helmut Newton perfected porno-chic fashion shots.

It’s a hell of a cast list for the more anonymous guests to live up to. But we must. This is hospitality as theatre, with the staff all conspiring to treat guests as if they were terrific. We must play our part, assuming noblesse, but then also wallowing.

Behaviour should, too, be considerate, lest we be classed with the Rolling Stones who left a room, according to Mme Augier, “like an Anglo-Saxon souk, with old hamburgers and tomato ketchup”. Michael Jackson had one room turned into a dance studio, another into a kitchen for his chef. He’d walk out of an evening disguised as a hippie, an Indian, a delivery man or, occasionally, a hooker – which doubtless surprised gamier fellows on the Promenade des Anglais.

Other pop stars abounded. Paul McCartney wrote Fool On The Hill and Sir Elton filmed the I’m Still Standing video right here.

Throughout these years, Mme Augier resisted attempts to buy the hotel from international corporations but also from the Sultan of Oman, and Bill Gates. He apparently wrote to the hotel manager thus: “Please ask Mme Augier to specify the size of cheque she wishes to receive”. No dice. Independence was all. An endowment fund was created to take over the Negresco, protecting it, whilst also supporting charities involved with the welfare of the handicapped and of animals.

Animals were key. “They are the brothers, the sisters, the children I never had,” she said. That’s why pets are not only welcomed to the hotel but have their own room service (beef or chicken: £9). That said, I’ve never seen any animals about the place, save Mme Augier’s own Yorkshire terrier. Apparently she also had a shar-pei.

So this is the place we’re going to, we people of quality. I returned there a week or two back. I walked in smiling, as if familiar with the high life. You have to. Otherwise you look like a nerd. Secretly, though, I was overwhelmed. The Salon Versailles, the one overseen by Louis XIV, is the sort of room where one might sit in pomp to receive petitioners. (It’s also, incidentally, where Arthur Rubinstein slept on the floor when, with the lift out of order, he refused to walk up to his fourth-floor bedroom.)

The Salon Royal could stage a pretty decent coronation. Opposite, the bar apparently has the sumptuous, wood-panelled atmosphere of a London club. I’ve never been admitted to a London club, so can’t confirm that – but it’s a pretty cool place, once distinguished by Richard Burton forgetting a priceless emerald necklace on a bar-stool after “prolonged discussions with the barman”.

Other drinkers may have thought it was part of the décor, for treasures are ubiquitous, from a corridor-full of Dali originals on the fourth floor to a bust of Mrs Renoir by Mr Renoir, via Raymond Moretti’s wall-filling portrait of Louis Armstrong. Halfway up the grand staircase stands an 18th-century tin bath of the sort in which Marat was murdered. It’s styled like a giant boot. Once in, your movement would be limited, so little wonder that the chap couldn’t fight off knife-woman Charlotte Corday.

Rooms and suites have genuine stuff from Louis XIII to Art Deco and beyond. Ours had an upholstered bedhead like 100 overlapping artichoke leaves, plus more Brian May portraits, a Louis XV desk and a floral couch made more comfy with cushions of EasyJet orange.

Gratification doesn’t come much more potent than when, having walked across one’s salon (allow a few minutes), one stands on the suite’s balcony, looks down upon normal people – and seeks to empathise.

Then there’s dinner.  I’ll spare you the food porn, but suffice it to say that, in the last year or so I’ve had many very good meals in French and British restaurants, a few excellent ones – and two which stand out above all others. As mentioned here recently, one was in the Hotel de France in Auch.

The other was in the Negresco’s two-Michelin-star restaurant, the Chantecler. Chef Virginie Basselot provided six exquisite courses, three hours passed as one, and we left the table in the finest possible fettle.

I found one fault. The coffee machine in the bedroom. Like 67 per cent of all coffee machines, it proved incomprehensible, no matter how hard I hit it. I’d have called for help from the terribly pleasant personnel, but I was running out of €10 notes, and my magnanimity went no higher.

But you’re probably better with machines than I am – you couldn’t conceivably be worse – and so, if you have enough money (you need quite a lot), Bob is very much your uncle.

How to do it

Room-only doubles from £290 a night. Five-course dinner, Le Chantecler restaurant, costs £154pp. Three-course dinner, La Rotonde brasserie, £57pp. Later this year, the hotel will have a spa and beach restaurant. See hotel-negresco-nice.com.