Monte-Carlo Bay Hotel & Resort

Monaco is not a resort destination, which is exactly why Monte-Carlo Bay exists. It opened in 2005 on a four-hectare peninsula at the Larvotto end of town, built out over the water by the Brussels practice L'Atelier d'Art Urbain with the Monegasque architect Louis Rué, who set an L-shaped block of three towers so that most of the hotel faces the Mediterranean. The style keeps to the codes of the Mediterranean palaces, arches, colonnades and pale stone. It is the only hotel in the principality built around the idea that you might stay put.

There are more than 330 rooms, twenty-two of them suites, every one with a terrace and around three quarters facing the sea. They are modern and comfortable rather than characterful, and the sea-facing ones look back across Larvotto beach to the town. The ground floor is glass, garden and water. Four hectares of planting hold some 1,500 species and an organic vegetable plot that Terre de Monaco tends for the kitchen, the Blue Gin bar sits on the waterfront with the yachts in the middle distance, and a door leads straight through to Sporting Monte-Carlo and Jimmy'z.

What you come for is the water. The sand-bottomed lagoon winds through the gardens past waterfalls and planted islets laid out by the landscape architect Jean Mus. It runs from May to September, with a heated indoor pool joined to an outdoor one the rest of the year. Since 2017 there has been a guarded swimming area in the nature reserve off the hotel's shore, and a watersports base on the pontoon. The spa became SPA Clarins & myBlend in April 2025, on the hotel's twentieth birthday, replacing Cinq Mondes. The kids' club, Petit VIP, is a summer club whose reopening is planned for summer 2027, so check the dates. And there is Blue Bay, where Marcel Ravin holds two Michelin stars for cooking that draws on his Caribbean roots, with L'Orange Verte open all day and Las Brisas, the summer restaurant, planned to reopen in summer 2027.

The pattern in guest feedback is that it works best as a family or resort stay rather than a Monte-Carlo stay. The complaint that surfaces most is distance: the casino square is a 23-minute walk or a short bus ride, and the road along the beach is not a pretty one. The lagoon pool and breakfast room get crowded in July and August, and the rooms are comfortable but anonymous, so this is not where you come for character. It suits families, groups and anyone who wants pool days with Monaco as an optional evening. Entry rates also sit below what the group's Belle Époque houses ask on the Place du Casino, which often buys a sea view rather than a courtyard one.