4 avenue de la Madone, Monaco
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In Monaco, most buildings want to be noticed. The Hôtel Métropole, a minute's walk from the Casino square, prefers camouflage. It sits back from the street, down a drive behind an archway flanked by Egyptian columns, and the gardens in front are thick with clipped cypresses and palms. From the road, the lobby barely shows. A few steps up that drive, the noise of Monaco switches off, and the busiest square in town might as well be in another country.
The house, a Belle Époque building of nearly a hundred and forty years, belongs to none of the big groups that run the Casino and its neighbours. Jacques Garcia has been its designer for two decades, and his lobby bar, open all day, has a Picasso and a Warhol on its walls. Several times a year the public rooms take on a new mood, down to the music and the staff's ties. Nobody out on the street would ever know.
There are about a hundred and twenty-five rooms, roughly half of them suites, and Garcia is renovating them floor by floor. One floor is dressed in cool blues and the next in warm golds, with embroidered fabric on the walls and Italian marble in the bathrooms. The views go to the sea, the gardens or the town. Families are welcome, and in summer there is a children's club. At the top, the Carré d'Or suite has a terrace of more than a hundred square metres, from which Monaco can be admired without having to take part.
Most days revolve around Odyssey, the pool deep inside the grounds. Karl Lagerfeld designed it, with heated seawater and glass panels engraved with the adventures of Ulysses. The hero needed ten years to get home. Guests manage the trip from lounger to lunch table in rather less, and in summer an Italian kitchen takes over the terrace.
Dinner stays inside the walls as well. Les Ambassadeurs is the grand room, where Christophe Cussac, who trained under Joël Robuchon, cooks a refined Mediterranean menu, and a chef's table waits for the curious. Yoshi is quieter, serving Japanese food beside a tiny garden of pebbles and miniature maples. Between the two, an hour in the new Guerlain spa fits neatly. Its pedicure studio bears the name of Bastien Gonzalez, famous among people who take their feet seriously.
Even the best camouflage has a weak spot. The rooms are being renovated in stages, so not every floor has the new look yet, and it pays to ask which one is on offer. Beneath the hotel lies a shopping centre, handy when it rains but a little at odds with the secluded air above. There is no sea swimming on the doorstep.
The Hôtel de Paris dresses for the square and enjoys the attention. The Métropole dresses in green and keeps its head down, and in a town built on being seen, that is a talent of its own.
Karl Lagerfeld
Odyssey is the only pool Karl Lagerfeld designed: eighteen backlit engraved glass panels follow Ulysses across the Mediterranean above a basin of heated seawater.
From the avenue de la Madone, arrivals pass through an arch and up a paved drive between clipped hedges, potted palms and a strip of lawn, with taller palms and cypresses screening the garden from the street. Guests landing by helicopter are met at the Monaco heliport and driven the last fifteen minutes to this door.
The lobby and its bar sit beneath an Art Deco glass roof, dressed by Jacques Garcia in wood panelling, velvet, burgundy and gold, with alcoves lined with books and works by Picasso, Francis Bacon and Warhol. Four times a year a new floral installation, the Metropole Mood, takes the centre of the room; since September 2026 it is Autumn Glow.
Odyssey lies in a garden screened by palms and cypresses, with loungers, double sunbeds and a terrace around a basin of heated seawater. It is Karl Lagerfeld's only pool, lined with eighteen backlit engraved glass panels tracing Ulysses' voyage. It is kept for hotel guests and club members, opens onto the Guerlain spa, and serves Zia's Italian menu from April to September.
Yoshi is the hotel's smallest restaurant, about forty seats in a room by Didier Gomez of wood, ebony and silk, its windows opening onto a Japanese garden by Jacques Messin. The kitchen works with nigiri, teppanyaki and black cod marinated in sake, there are more than twenty sakes, and at lunch a bento box of three courses.
At a glance
Where
4 avenue de la Madone, 98000 Monaco, in the Carré d'Or, a few steps from the Place du Casino and its gardens; reached through an arch and up a drive screened by palms and cypresses. Nice Côte d'Azur airport 30 km; Monaco heliport 15 minutes by car; Monaco Monte-Carlo station a 15-minute walk; Port Hercule and Port de Fontvieille 5 minutes by taxi
Why this one
Heated seawater, for residents.
Palms and cypresses hide the drive.
Picasso, Bacon and Warhol.
The Edit Notes
The rooms are being redone in phases. The first, unveiled in October 2025, covered 45 rooms and suites on the second and third floors: soft blues and embroidered Colefax & Fowler wall fabrics on the second, golden tones on the third, Calacatta Borghini marble throughout. The hotel says the work will continue floor by floor. The new look covers five categories, from the Deluxe Premium Room to the Deluxe Premium Suite, so when booking it is worth asking whether the room offered is on a renovated floor.
Most categories list views of the city or of the Allée de Toscane, the side street beside the hotel. The sea is named for the Deluxe Sea View Suite, on a high floor above the Casino and the Odyssey pool, for the top-floor Prestige Suite with its 10 m² terrace, and for some Prestige Junior Suites. The Azur Suite, on the ground floor, looks over the Casino gardens and the Grand Prix circuit instead. A sea view has to be booked by category, not requested at check-in.
The two evening restaurants keep different days. Les Ambassadeurs serves dinner Thursday to Monday and asks for elegant evening attire; its Chef's Table seats a few guests inside the kitchens, and a private salon is available. Yoshi opens Wednesday to Saturday, for lunch and dinner, in a room of about forty seats. On a Tuesday neither serves dinner, and on a Wednesday only Yoshi does. From April to September Zia at Odyssey adds an Italian dinner by the pool.
The Kids Club runs only in July and August, for children aged four to ten, and is included for hotel guests, with two activity leaders. The rest of the year the arrangement for children is the Family Suite: 69 m² on the fifth floor with a city view, joining a Deluxe Junior Suite for the parents to a room fitted out for children up to ten, with its own bathroom and a cot. Odyssey is reserved for hotel guests and club members, and pets are not admitted there.
The price question
The money buys quiet a few steps from the Place du Casino: a Belle Époque house set back behind its garden, a seawater pool for residents, two serious restaurants and a new Guerlain spa under one roof. It does not buy a uniform product. The renovation is still moving floor by floor, most rooms look over the city rather than the sea, and swimming in the sea means leaving the hotel.
It works for a stay of two or three nights in Monaco built around the pool by day and one dinner in each restaurant, booked on the nights they serve, and for families in July and August. Guests who want to wake up to the sea from any room, or to walk straight onto a beach, should book a sea-view suite or look at a hotel by the water.
Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo
The Société des Bains de Mer's hotel on the Place du Casino itself, opened in 1864, home to Le Louis XV-Alain Ducasse.
Hôtel Hermitage Monte-Carlo
A Belle Époque hotel of the Société des Bains de Mer above the port, with a glass-roofed Winter Garden.
The Extra Edit
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