Le Negresco

Few hotel silhouettes are as instantly recognisable as Le Negresco's, its white Belle Époque façade and rose-coloured dome anchoring the Promenade des Anglais since 1913. Built for the Romanian hotelier Henri Negresco to seduce the wintering aristocracy of Europe, it remains the last great independent palace hotel on the Baie des Anges, and the French state has listed the building as a historic monument.

Inside, the hotel is unlike anything else on the Riviera. Decades of ownership by the late Jeanne Augier filled its salons with an extraordinary private collection spanning five centuries of French art, from Aubusson tapestries and royal portraiture to Niki de Saint Phalle sculpture. The Salon Royal, with its glazed cupola and vast chandelier, is one of the south of France's most theatrical interiors, and every corridor rewards a slow walk.

Rooms range from flamboyantly classical to playfully contemporary, many looking straight over the Mediterranean. Le Chantecler, the hotel's celebrated gastronomic restaurant, leads a dining offer that also includes the carousel-themed La Rotonde brasserie. The Negresco is eccentric, grand and utterly individual — the reason many travellers come to Nice at all.