This Small Beach Town Hidden Between Cannes and Nice Is a Local Favorite — With White-sand Beaches, Quaint Cafes, and Hotels That Feel Like Home

Nearly a century ago, when F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda holed up on the French Riviera in seaside Villa St. Louis, Fitzgerald wrote a letter saying that Antibes was the “right place to rough it, an escape from the world.” Roughing it is a stretch — crowned by a 16th-century fort shielding the historic streets from the sea, Antibes is one of the few fortified medieval towns that sits directly on the Mediterranean (most of the Riviera’s eagle’s nest villages hover on hilltops high over the water). 

 Punctuated by pine tree–covered coves and coastal villas, the rocky peninsula forming Cap d'Antibes and Juan-les-Pins has drawn other literary greats like Jules Verne, plus performers and painters like Jean Cocteau and Josephine Baker, who stayed with her pet cheetah at Fitzgerald’s former home-turned-hotel, the five-star Hôtel Belles Rives — one of the few spots on the Riviera that is still family owned and operated. “Locals come here on the weekends because it feels as comfortable as going to visit family,” says fourth-generation owner Antoine Chauvin-Estène, whose heritage is intertwined with the hotel’s storied history. 

 Cap d'Antibes and jet-set favorite Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc may be the star of Slim Aarons photos and annual galas, but Juan-les-Pins offers just the opposite — an escape from the crowds swarming swanky cities on the Riviera like Cannes and Monaco. Part of the appeal is its predictability: the provençal market unfolds without fail each morning, stalls piled with pyramids of soaps and spices, and everyone gathers for un café (espresso) at Le Ruban Bleu. Locals lunch on the patio of Le Bistrot du Curé, near the lighthouse, dining on regional favorites like pan bagnat, a niçoise salad–stuffed sandwich, and pissaladière, an anchovy and olive-topped onion tart. And each afternoon, a woman in a swim cap singing like a siren practices her backstroke in the bay while water skiers zig-zag in front of the hotel’s pontoon. 

 As the sun starts setting, men in suit jackets and women clad in layers of linen recline in low-slung armchairs sipping champagne and classic cocktails at cigar lounge–inspired Bar Fitzgerald, which shows off a fresh face this season after a major revamp. At sibling spot down the street, Hôtel Juana was a haven for jazz stars like Duke Ellington and painters like Picasso, and it has modernized its 1930s façade with a vibrant new outdoor terrace bar and restaurant, Paseo, which nods to the hotel’s eclectic past through vintage-style, spritz-colored chairs and Chagall-inspired ceramics.

While living in Nice, we’d skip the pebble-strewn beaches a few minutes’ walk away and hop the train down to Juan-les-Pins, posting up under crochet parasols at La Petite Plage, which feels like as much of an escape as French Polynesia — and is one of the rare beaches on the Riviera with Caribbean-like white sand. Even as the mega yachts dock in the distance, Juan-les-Pins is protected from the glitz across the bay in Cannes. 

The fishermen from the 1930s may have moved on, but a few dozen of their traditional, handcrafted wooden boats, called pointus, still bob in the Port de l’Olivette. This tiny harbor extending off a crescent-shaped cove in Cap d’Antibes is a reminder of the slow-paced lifestyle the village has managed to maintain since the literary set first started summering here in the roaring '20s. In the evenings, the nearby port lighthouse — perhaps the inspiration for the light on the dock in “The Great Gatsby” — still blinks its green warning signal, while the waves lapping against the sea wall below the balconies of Belles Rives are the only noise you’ll hear as you’re drifting off to sleep.