Nice, France

I tend to revisit the places I love, over and over—getting to know a city or town or hotel and its people on a very intimate level. Then there are so many places that I haven’t been to, because I don’t have an “in.” Earlier this year, my husband returned from drinks with a friend whose own friend had recently moved to Nice. So when a trip to India fell apart (visa issues), we decided to take this two-week gift of no plans and travel somewhere new to us. Nice made the cut, thanks to our new friend, Gauderic.

We knew that the weather would be terrible in February, but we didn’t care. The only times I’ve been through Nice have been in high summer, when there is so much traffic and we never stop because we can’t find parking and just want to get to where we’re heading. Gauderic picked us up at the train station and told us the plan for the evening and the following day. I trusted his confidence, even though I’d literally met him moments before. We had dinner together at La Petite Maison, where he took charge and ordered everything, and we had one of the most epic meals of our lives. 

Because it was rainy, we focused our time on visiting places that we’d be likely to avoid in high season: Villa Kérylos, the Matisse Chapel, the Léger Museum, Fondation Maeght, La Colombe d’Or. We got to see the city and the incredibly rich area around it, discovering so much that we never would have if the sun had been shining. After this very off-season trip, we found ourselves talking up Nice to friends. So much so that when we were invited to attend the opening of the Hôtel du Couvent a couple of months later, we gladly accepted. 

It turns out I wasn’t the only one who tended to drive past Nice. For years, the mayor had dreamed of giving this beautiful city a destination hotel that people of great taste and influence would flock to, rather than using it as the springboard to everywhere else across the coast and Provence. So a decade ago, he reached out to hotelier Valéry Grégo. He was seeking a visionary who would take on a historic city landmark that had been occupied by the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary since 1803, before it closed in the 1980s. The convent was constructed by the nuns from the Order of Saint Claire in 1604, using local materials largely repurposed from a neighboring chateau. Valéry, the pioneering hotelier behind properties like Les Roches Rouges on the French Riviera and Le Pigalle in Paris, was perfectly cast to reimagine the convent and meticulously restore its buildings and 2.5 acres of gardens.

The project wound up taking 10 years. I found the thoughtfulness, care and passion that Valéry and his collaborators, including Studio Mumbai and Festen Architecture, clearly brought to reimagining the spaces to be so inspiring. The preservation of the buildings’ original design details (especially in the convent wing) honors the past, while inviting guests to linger over them. They also revived the centuries’ old herbalist shop founded by the nuns and brought in resident herbalist, Gregory Unrein, to dispense advice and custom-made tea and tinctures using herbs from the garden. There’s also a lovely lap pool with views over the city and to the Mediterranean beyond.

We stayed in two rooms—the first overlooked Nice’s Old Town and the sea, while the second had a terrace above the courtyard. All 88 rooms are thoughtfully curated with custom pieces and period antiques, along with clever books and beautiful barware. The packaging of the bath products and stationery have such a tasteful, old-world aesthetic—it’s a hotel where you really have to practice self-control to not walk off with all the little details. 

We arrived at cocktail hour and into the hands of bartenders Max and Pierre, both of whom were knowledgeable, sweet, and made excellent martinis and Negronis. All of our meals in the hotel’s two restaurants were exactly what we love to eat and can somehow never manage to find in most nice hotels—the best ingredients with minimal intervention, the food just speaking for itself. Dishes like a pea tart, or marinated sardines with roasted red pepper, are inspired by local seasonality and largely sourced from the hotel’s farm an hour away, where they also keep some 250 chickens. There’s an on-site bakery, set within the convent’s original one—and even the flour is milled daily. One of the nicest touches is the parting gift, their homemade madeleines in the cutest little waxed bag. 

We’d already experienced Nice’s Old Town in winter (we loved the Cours Saleya market, which alternates daily between food and antiques), and the blustery but beautiful beach. This time we discovered walking up and over Castle Hill, down to the old port, and all of its little antiques shops. One night, Gauderic invited us to meet him for drinks at Ruhl Plage, a beach club founded in 1920. We continued down the breezy Promenade des Anglais on that warm early summer night, watched local families getting in their last swims of the day, and strolled right into the club without a booking. Perhaps everyone driving past Nice has actually been what’s preserved it?