Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo

The Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo in afternoon sun, its cream belle-époque facades topped by slate domes and a corner rotunda with a domed lantern, green glass awnings and white parasols along the ground floor and cars and pedestrians crossing the avenue in front
Location: Monte Carlo, MonacoType: HotelYear: 2018Architect: Affine Design + Richard Martinet + Gabriel Viora + Pierre-Yves Rochon + David Collins Studio + Godinot de la Bretonnerie + Édouard-Jean NiermansPhotographer: Arnaud 25, Unknown

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Bengt Nyman, Anthony Lanneretonne, Adam Robb, Christophe Bouthe

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Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo by Affine Design in Monte Carlo, Monaco

The Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo is a belle-époque palace hotel on the Place du Casino in Monte Carlo, Monaco, opened in 1864 beside the Casino de Monte-Carlo and still owned by the Société des Bains de Mer that built it. Between 2014 and 2018 it was reinvented, wing by wing and without ever closing, by the Paris studio Affine Design under its founder Richard Martinet, working with the Monegasque architect Gabriel Viora, with the restaurant Ômer by Pierre-Yves Rochon and Le Bar Américain by David Collins Studio. The original building was drawn by Godinot de la Bretonnerie, and its sculpted facades by Édouard-Jean Niermans date from 1909–1910. It joins the Hôtel de Crillon in Paris, on which Martinet also worked, and grand hotels such as Raffles Hotel Singapore and The Ned on Archtene.

Portrait view along a colonnaded gallery at the Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo, square white columns with copper-toned bases and gold-lit niches beside a pale floor inlaid with star-patterned mosaic panels and black borders

François Blanc’s palace on the Place du Casino, 1864–1960

The hotel was the centrepiece of the resort that Prince Charles III and the entrepreneur François Blanc created in the 1860s. Blanc’s ambition, still quoted by the Société des Bains de Mer, was “a hotel that surpasses everything” created until then, and the Hôtel de Paris opened in 1864 on the square it shares with the Casino, before the Café de Paris, the Opéra de Monte-Carlo and the Hôtel Hermitage rose around it. Niermans gave it the exuberant facades of 1909–1910, with frescoes by the painter Paul Gervais; the building was raised again in 1920 by Émile Molinié, Charles Nicod and Albert Pouthier and once more around 1959–1960 under André Bruyère. Affine Design reads the house as the product of three great eras: Blanc’s founding hotel, the major extension of the early 1900s, and the 1960s under the auspices of Aristotle Onassis, when guests such as Winston Churchill added to its legend.

A radiating star of grey and black mosaic tesserae on a pale marble floor at the Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo, a colonnade of white columns with copper-clad bases and a glass-doored entrance glowing behind

Affine Design’s transformation, 2014–2018

The Société des Bains de Mer began the transformation in 2014 and entrusted it to Richard Martinet and Gabriel Viora, describing a programme of partial deconstruction, reconstruction, harmonised volumes, new spaces and new suites, carried out on an occupied site while the hotel stayed open. Affine Design supervised the architecture and interior architecture from feasibility studies to completion. The walkways and circulation were redrawn so that guests move more easily through the house; the 1904 entrance hall was restored and given skylights; every facade was restored and the south front was rebuilt to respect the original structure; and the roofs were redesigned, one of the major interventions. At the core of the plan a Mediterranean patio of 671 square metres was opened up, planted with palms and lined with boutiques for Graff, Harry Winston, Omega and Stardust, with floor mosaics by Pierre Mesguich. Inside, Affine’s palette is golden hues fading into white, with black lines and shades of grey, a contemporary reading of the palace rather than a period reconstruction.

The sitting room of the Prince Rainier III Suite at the Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo, tiered crystal chandeliers over oval gold coffee tables, red velvet armchairs and long sofas with jewel-coloured cushions on a striped blue and red rug, and backlit gold shelving beyond

A step-by-step reopening

The work was revealed in stages. In May 2017 the rebuilt Rotunda wing opened with new rooms of at least 34 square metres, along with Le Grill on the eighth floor, whose sliding roof opens to the sky above the sea. The Princess Grace Suite was inaugurated in November 2017 by Prince Albert II and Princess Stéphanie; in June 2018 Le Bar Américain reopened with interiors by David Collins Studio and a new terrace over the sea and the Place du Casino; and in December 2018 the patio was unveiled and Le Louis XV – Alain Ducasse à l’Hôtel de Paris returned to its original rooms facing the square, where the gilding, frescoes and hangings of the Salle Empire were restored. Alain Ducasse’s Ômer, designed by Pierre-Yves Rochon, followed in 2019 on the ground floor of the Rotunda wing, and the rooftop Prince Rainier III Suite completed the hotel early that year, leaving 207 rooms, some 60 per cent of them suites. The whole programme has been reported at around €270 million.

A suite living room at the Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo with a round dining table and grey upholstered chairs, a grey velvet sofa and round coffee table on a curving cream rug, glass-bead chandeliers and white wall mouldings, and a balustraded balcony beyond the windows

The Princess Grace and Prince Rainier III Suites

The two royal suites at the top of the building are the most personal rooms in the hotel. Prince Albert II worked with Martinet and Viora on both, in tribute to his parents. The Princess Grace Suite, created from the former Winston Churchill Suite as a duplex over two floors, has a glass partition etched with the princess’s handwriting, a sand-coloured carpet printed with her footprints, terraces and an infinity pool facing the Mediterranean. The Prince Rainier III Suite, the largest in the hotel, has a pared-back palette of black and white marble, small figurative sculptures welded by Prince Rainier himself, its own infinity pool looking over the domes of the Casino, and an office where his portrait as a young man is framed by a hand-painted glass wall in gold and navy. In the bathrooms of the rooms and suites Affine used generous slabs of Arabescato marble, basins carved from blocks of marble 30 centimetres thick, straw marquetry and bespoke furniture.

A bedroom in the Prince Rainier III Suite at the Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo, a white-made bed set against a carved gold-leaf headboard panel under a cove-lit ceiling, a walnut-panelled screen holding a television and a desk below a small gilded artwork

Photography and credits

The photographs open with the hotel’s domed corner and rotunda in afternoon sun, then step into the palm-planted patio and its colonnaded galleries, with their star-patterned mosaic floors, before returning to the main facade on the Place du Casino. Inside, they move from a suite salon to the sitting room, rooftop pool, office and a bedroom of the Prince Rainier III Suite, through light-filled suite salons and the living room, a bedroom and a restored door medallion of the Princess Grace Suite, and end in a guest bedroom with a folded white headboard wall and a marble bathroom opening onto a balcony. The exterior views are by Arnaud 25 (2020, CC BY-SA 4.0) and Bengt Nyman (2013, before the renovation, CC BY 2.0) on Wikimedia Commons; the Prince Rainier III Suite images are by Anthony Lanneretonne, and the Princess Grace Suite images by Adam Robb and Christophe Bouthe, as credited by Architectural Digest; the remaining photographs come from Affine Design’s project page, which does not name a photographer.

The upstairs living room of the Princess Grace Suite at the Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo, a gold-tinted glass partition etched with her handwriting, low grey sofas and tall windows beyond, and gilded starburst ornaments on a marble table in front

Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo gallery

The Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo in afternoon sun, its cream belle-époque facades topped by slate domes and a corner rotunda with a domed lantern, green glass awnings and white parasols along the ground floor and cars and pedestrians crossing the avenue in frontThe palm-planted patio at the heart of the Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo, a pale stone courtyard striped with dark inlaid bands leading between tall trunks and potted olive trees to a lit doorway framed by square white columnsPortrait view along a colonnaded gallery at the Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo, square white columns with copper-toned bases and gold-lit niches beside a pale floor inlaid with star-patterned mosaic panels and black bordersThe main facade of the Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo seen head-on from the Place du Casino, sculpted caryatids, cartouches and wrought-iron balconies beneath pointed slate domes, a white canopy over the entrance steps and the curved rotunda wing at leftA radiating star of grey and black mosaic tesserae on a pale marble floor at the Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo, a colonnade of white columns with copper-clad bases and a glass-doored entrance glowing behindA suite salon at the Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo with a glass chandelier, brown velvet sofas and a low bronze table on a pale rug, white panelled walls with gold sconces and a round mirror, and an arched mirror reflecting the dining table beyondThe sitting room of the Prince Rainier III Suite at the Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo, tiered crystal chandeliers over oval gold coffee tables, red velvet armchairs and long sofas with jewel-coloured cushions on a striped blue and red rug, and backlit gold shelving beyondThe infinity pool of the Prince Rainier III Suite on the roof of the Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo, its still blue water reflecting a slate-domed turret, with the copper domes of the Casino, the hills of the coast and the Mediterranean behindA suite living room at the Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo with a round dining table and grey upholstered chairs, a grey velvet sofa and round coffee table on a curving cream rug, glass-bead chandeliers and white wall mouldings, and a balustraded balcony beyond the windowsThe office of the Prince Rainier III Suite at the Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo, a portrait of the young prince in white tie framed by a hand-painted glass wall of gold and deep blue swirls, gold-based lamps and a dark lacquered desk with an open bookA bedroom in the Prince Rainier III Suite at the Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo, a white-made bed set against a carved gold-leaf headboard panel under a cove-lit ceiling, a walnut-panelled screen holding a television and a desk below a small gilded artworkA bright suite salon at the Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo with a deep cream sofa, a cobalt-blue chair at a round table, a gold leaf-cluster chandelier and a round gilded wall light, and doors opening to a balcony above the Place du CasinoThe upstairs living room of the Princess Grace Suite at the Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo, a gold-tinted glass partition etched with her handwriting, low grey sofas and tall windows beyond, and gilded starburst ornaments on a marble table in frontA bedroom in the Princess Grace Suite at the Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo, a wide bed heaped with gold and olive cushions before a pleated gold fabric wall, a sand-coloured carpet and floor-to-ceiling windows framing the MediterraneanClose detail of a restored plaster medallion on a white door in the Princess Grace Suite at the Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo, a sunburst face within an octagonal frame of scrolls, beside a curved moulding and a polished gold lever handleA guest bedroom at the Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo with a white sculptural headboard wall of folded geometric panels, a white bed and upholstered bench, a glass desk and grey chair, and French windows opening to wrought-iron balconiesA marble bathroom at the Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo, a freestanding oval bathtub with a floor-standing chrome mixer before twin marble vanities and backlit mirrors, and an open door to a balcony with a slate-domed turret beyond

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