Hotel Du Cap - History

History

The founder of France's Le Figaro newspaper, Hippolyte de Villemessant, built the Villa Soleil in 1869 for writers seeking inspiration. In 1887, Italian hotelier Antoine Sella bought the property, and opened the Grand Hôtel du Cap in 1889. In 1914, the Eden Roc pavillon was built 400 yards away from the main hotel. Gerald and Sara Murphy, a young American couple who had expatriated to France in the 1920s, once rented the hotel for an entire summer, a unique event for the era as the French Riviera was not a summer destination at the time, but a winter escape for the wealthy. With the Murphys came many legendary writers and artists of the Lost Generation, including F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. Fitzgerald immortalized it as the Hôtel des Etrangers in "Tender Is the Night". Marc Chagall made sketches in one of the shady beachside cabanas after their construction in the 1960s. Guests who flocked there included Marlene Dietrich, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Winston Churchill and Charles De Gaulle. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton conducted an affair and honeymooned there. The hotel has traditionally been a particular favourite of film stars, especially during the annual Cannes Film Festival.

Rudolf August Oetker, a German industrialist, and his wife Maja von Malaisé first spotted the famed mansion while sailing on the Côte d'Azur in 1964; they bought the hotel five years later, in 1969.

The hotel was for many years famously known for not accepting any kinds of credit cards. Cash only was accepted though most guests wired money ahead of their stay. In 2006 this policy was finally dropped.