The Rise and Decline of Grasse's Hotels

At the time of writing this post, there is only one hotel open in Grasse's old centre (the Panorama, near Cours Honoré Cresp), although a little out of town there are the Best Western Elixir and the small but luxurious Bastide St Antoine. Yet in the 1930s, there were six hotels in the town centre and thirteen large establishments serving tourists and winter residents nearby, to say nothing of several pensions and boarding houses in the immediate area. What happened?

Hotels in the 1890s.

The map below shows Grasse's hotels in the 1890s (with the old town area marked in yellow). There were four hotels on the edge of the old town serving overnight and business visitors. All close to the gates of what was left of the old walls, they were the successors to the inns where Grasse catered for travellers along the ancient route through the town. There is evidence of auberges, under names such as the Ecu de France, in the fifteenth century.

Grasse hotels in the 1890s. Old town hatched in yellow. Source: Google My Maps

Away along the road to Magagnosc, though, was a precursor to what was to come: the Grand Hotel was the exception because it served rich tourists and winter residents, known here as hivernants ('winterers’).

The town hotels didn’t cater for this new class of visitors. Some went to coastal towns like Nice and Cannes. Others, especially those with health concerns who saw the clean air and perceived micro-climate of the mountains alleviating their conditions, were drawn to Grasse. The Grand Hotel, completed in 1882 and gaining huge publicity (at least among the classes who mattered!) from Queen Victoria’s visit in 1891, was the first and largest establishment of a new wave.

The town authorities, who were in effect the big perfume manufacturers, didn’t want high class hotels which could offer the manual workers of the town better wages. Hotel owners, like Ferdinand Rost, a German who was the driving force behind the Grand, were also potentially a separate power base, with different interests to theirs.

Grasse as a resort in the 1930s

Nevertheless, as the next map shows, tourist, hivernant and invalid demand prevailed, especially after the Great War.

The grandest of the town hotels, Muraour et de la Poste, offered a high-end restaurant in the twenties.

No less than thirteen luxury establishments had appeared, with the Grand now rivalled by the Park-Palace, the Splendid Hotel Bellevue, the Victoria (now in av Riou Blanquet), the Belvedere Palace and the Hotel Beau Soleil. The map does not show several pensions (boarding houses), especially on the heights to the north west of the town, catering for guests a little lower in the financial spectrum.

Grasse hotels in the 1930s. Town hotels marked in red; tourist and 'hivernant' hotels in blue.

Two photographs from Litschgy's family album reproduced in his book, showing a coach leaving the Victoria hotel and some guests at a masked ball

Winter Life in the Hivernant hotels

A Grassois named Emile Litschgy (1920-2004), whose father was the proprietor of the Hotel Victoria after the Great War, wrote three volumes of history about Grasse.   He gives some vivid pen-pictures of the hivernants and their activities in his book about the period (it's only available in French).

He explains that valets, maids and nurses for the children accompanied the families and typically English meals (lamb with mint sauce, rhubarb pie!!!) were served to the British visitors.  A monthly magazine, 'L’Hiver à Grasse' (‘Winter in Grasse’) listed who was staying where, with guests coming from the UK, USA, Germany and other countries as well as all parts of France. 

A ‘pisteur’ (nothing to do with skiing – perhaps a host or guide) met guests from the trains to Cannes or Grasse and made sure the journey to their hotel was speedy and comfortable.  After their arrival, masseurs, pedicurists and hairdressers attended to guests’ needs, while haute couture dressmakers were on tap and there was a regular programme of entertainments, including masked balls, concerts and, at Easter, a 'bataille des fleurs' (‘battle of the flowers’).

Restored 1932 Delage D8 with body by Chapron and Lalique radiator mascot (photo Murgatroyd49), typical of the type of car owned by Parisian hivernants

Litschgy describes the construction of a new and large garage at the Victoria because some guests arrived in their own cars, usually with two liveried chauffeurs (‘one to drive and the other to open the doors’).  Magnificent and now classic cars were involved – Delages, Delahayes, Hispano-Suizas, etc.  He even portrays a dispute between the hotels and the drivers of horse carriages (‘victorias’) about the use of autobuses for local journeys, from which the horsemen apparently emerged triumphant.

When it comes to the continuing tension in the town between the perfume business owners and the hotel proprietors, he clearly takes his father’s side.  He says that the perfumers were arrogant – they ignored the hivernants, who had to put up with the smoke from the factory chimneys and the piercing sound of their factory sirens.

Oblivious to approaching catastrophe, hotel owners continued to invest. The last of the hivernant hotels, the Montfleury on the St Hilaire hill, was built in the thirties. Then World War II put an abrupt halt to the annual arrival of the hivernants, never to be revived.  The two grandest hotels did not survive the war.

Letterhead of Grand Hotel 1907 (Grasse archives), still celebrating Queen Victoria's visit 16 years later

The Grand Hotel

The Grand was Grasse’s leading hotel throughout most of its existence.  Prejudiced by its German ownership, it was requisitioned as a military hospital in 1914, then completely refurbished and re-opened under a new proprietor for the 1920-21 winter season.  But it fell victim to first the Italian and then the German occupation in 1943-44 and never recovered.  It’s now a residential block known as the Grand Palais, although it still has a plaque over the door commemorating Victoria’s visit.

The Park-Palace

The Park-Palace (sic - the name was in English) opened in 1928, built on the site (and perhaps on the same foundations) of Alice de Rothschild’s ‘country cottage’, the Villa Victoria. 

The Park-Palace in its thirties heyday

Eclipsing the Grand, it was regarded for a time as one of the very best hotels of the Côte d’Azur.  But its time was short: it became the headquarters of the Italian occupiers in 1943 and was then sold by a post-liberation administrator who according to Litschgy, ‘se refugier au Portugal avec son butin’ (‘ran off to Portugal with his booty’).  Like its rival the Grand, it has been apartments since then.

Some of the other establishments survived much longer, but all were gone by 2000.

The Victoria and the Bellevue

The first Victoria opened as early as 1860, when it was probably the best hotel in town.  It was moved subsequently to the Porte Neuve but the proprietor decided that it was the wrong location to attract the rich British and started to build a new Victoria on rue Riou-Blanquet.  During construction, a fatal accident occurred and he decided to abandon the site and build his new hotel a few metres up the hill.  The abandoned site was taken up by another hotelier and became the Bellevue!

Then and now. Hotel Bellevue in the seventies with the recently refurbished building below. (Top right) Hotel Victoria in 1995 and (below) today. Even the palm trees have succumbed.

Both buildings still exist.  The Bellevue, now an apartment block, still displays its old name.  The Victoria never fully recovered after World War II, during which it was first a girls’ school and then a barracks.  It reverted to a hotel after the war and at some stage was taken over by an insurance company as a vacation location for its employees. Since they left, it’s been sitting there deteriorating on the hill, a forlorn sight above rue Riou-Blanquet.

The Beau Soleil

The Beau Soleil was developed from a small pension on bd Crouet (on the way from the station to the town centre) to a significant hotel, all under family ownership. 

(Left) Postcard with a manipulated (before Photoshop!) dated August 1970 of Beau Soleil's long gone pool (Right) Almost ghostly signs on bd Crouet attest to the buildings' previous use

Many postcards and publicity photographs of it survive, including of its well-known panoramic restaurant popular for weddings and other gatherings.  It was still a hotel in the early eighties, before succumbing, like its peers, to residential conversion. 

The Belvedere, later the Montfleury

The Belvedere was the one of the last of the grand hotels, developed near the site of an older, smaller establishment of the same name in the early 1930s.  It is said that the Grassois were amazed by the way in which the architect included metal beams and frames and concrete embellishments ‘tout comme a New York’ (‘just like New York’).

After a period as the Hotel Montfleury, it became a nursing home and it’s now part of the Petit-Paris medical complex on the top of the St Hilaire hill.

The Town Hotels

Even the town hotels declined and disappeared, although some can still be identified.

Hôtel Muraour et de la Poste on bd Jeu de Ballon

Hôtel du Commerce at 4 bd Fragonard (previously Place Neuve)

Hôtel de la Terrasse, 6 bd Fragonard

A bar at 33 bd Jeu de Ballon preserves the remains of the Hôtel des Négociants

Hotels in Grasse in the 1980s and today

By the 1990s, the era of Grasse’s grand hotels was well and truly over.  Better treatments than fresh air were available to the invalids and the lure of the coast was too strong for the healthy. 

Grasse hotels in the 1980s. Old town hatched in yellow. Town hotels marked in red; tourist hotels in blue.

Today even later comers such as the Patti (replaced by apartments), the Hotel des Parfums (a relatively short-lived modern building above the La Foux car park which is now derelict) and the Mandarine (originally a religious guest house and subsequently the Sainte Therese pension) have gone.  Only the recently reopened Panorama remains anywhere near the old town. 

There are various projects for a new hotel, perhaps as part of the Martelly development or to replace the Hotel des Parfums, but the great days of Grasse’s hotels, not unlike those in many of Europe’s once so fashionable spa towns, are a distant memory.

Emile Litschgy, 'En ce temps-la 1920-1940', TAC 2002