Palm Beach – Pointe Croisette

Highlights: Casino Palm Beach · Port Pierre Canto · La Roseraie · Plage du Moure Rouge · Stade des Hespérides · Yacht Club de Cannes · Plage Zamenhof

At the eastern tip of La Croisette, where the boulevard gives way to the open sea, the Pointe Croisette unfurls its arc of beaches and gardens facing the îles de Lérins. A former military ground that became, in 1929, the setting of the casino Palm Beach, this Cannes land's end has passed through wars, years of splendour and silences, before being reborn today as one of the most sought-after residential neighbourhoods in the town, between sea, heritage and discretion.

A land's end shaped by the history of Cannes

Before Lord Brougham stopped there by chance in 1834 and had his villa built, Cannes was but a fishing village sheltered by its islands, heir to the monastery of Lérins founded by saint Honorat in the fifth century. The winter town that then unfolded along the shore found, to the east, a natural boundary: a rocky point where La Croisette comes to die in the sea, facing the open water and the Lérins.

This ground, long devoted to coastal defence, bears the traces of the Fort de la Croix. Before becoming a place of pleasures, it served as a pigeon-shooting range, a favoured diversion of the aristocracy wintering on the Côte d'Azur during the Belle Époque. It was on this history-laden site that Cannes would build, at the turn of the twentieth century, one of its most singular monuments.

1929: the advent of the Palm Beach

In 1929, the Société des Bains de Mer of Cannes inaugurated on the point the casino Palm Beach, whose Hispano-Moorish architecture blended with Art Déco stood in contrast to the palaces of La Croisette. A restaurant, a ballroom, gaming rooms and two swimming pools, one of seawater, the other of fresh water, made it an establishment inspired by the great American resorts, cut out for the nights of international high society.

Around the casino, the neighbourhood took shape: the marina, now known as port Pierre Canto, welcomed yachts and sailing boats, while La Roseraie spread its beds between sea and pinewood. Palm Beach thus became a neighbourhood apart, conceived for leisure, for strolling and for the view over the Lérins.

War, cinema and gaming: a century of stories

The Palm Beach passed through the twentieth century without being spared its torments. Requisitioned during the Second World War, the building was bombed on 7 August 1944, its interiors ransacked, its pool pierced. It would not be until 1947 that it reopened its doors and gradually regained its pre-war splendour.

The following decades anchored the Palm Beach in the popular memory: in 1962, its salons served as the setting for the filming of Mélodie en sous-sol, with Jean Gabin and Alain Delon, while its tables became, over the years, one of the high places of poker on the Côte d'Azur.

Closures and rebirths

The neighbourhood then went through the cycles peculiar to grand addresses: the casino closed in 1991 despite renovations, then reopened in 2002 under the banner of the Partouche group, before a definitive closure in 2017. That same year, the point reinvented itself in another way: the pedestrian promenade of the digue du Moure Rouge was inaugurated, opening the shore to walkers and to lovers of the sunset.

The development continued with the completion, in 2021, of the corniche du Moure Rouge and its cycle path, while the historic casino building, now under rehabilitation, is preparing to become a new hub of activity for the neighbourhood, faithful to its original vocation: to welcome and to bring the point to life.

Palm Beach today: the art of living facing the Lérins

Far from the effervescence of the centre of La Croisette, Palm Beach cultivates a residential and tranquil atmosphere. Its villas and residences with generous gardens enjoy direct access to the beaches of Zamenhof, Bijou-Plage, Gazagnaire and Moure Rouge, as well as to the Yacht Club de Cannes and its pontoons. Nearby, the Stade des Hespérides hosts each year the international show-jumping events, a sign of an art of living where sport, nature and elegance answer one another.

To live in Palm Beach is to inhabit a point where the evening light settles upon the îles de Lérins, where La Roseraie is fragrant in spring and where the silence of the gardens follows, a few minutes' walk away, the bustle of La Croisette. A century after the inauguration of its casino, the neighbourhood retains this rare identity: that of an elegant land's end, turned towards the open sea.