You can’t help thinking the Pope should have held out. Sure, the casino had reopened a few years before, the neighbouring Opera House, Paris’ Palais Garnier in miniature, inaugurated more recently still, but Monaco remained an impoverished state. The Grimaldis’ gamble was yet to pay off. Had Pope Leo XIII played the long game, and not offloaded his prime plot of Monegasque real estate to the Monte-Carlo Hotel Company in the nascent 1880s, the bargaining chips would have been his. But then, Leo XIII needed the readies. He was still reeling from the loss of the Papal States.

By the time Lebanese property bigshot Nabil Boustany bought the hotel that had been built on the Pope’s former land 100 years later, Monaco was well on its way to becoming Mecca for Money, both Old and New. The Fontvieille district, the Kowloon-aping quarter you can see from the Rock today, had just been reclaimed from the sea; the principality (the world’s second smallest country, after the Pope’s, coincidentally) was already positioning itself as a crime-free utopia for the tax averse; the march of the identikit modernist high-rise, whose devastating footprint would come to blight almost every prime inch of the sunlit princedom, had begun apace. As the skyline around it became subjugated by stucco and cinder, Boustany’s hotel, a mid-rise wedding cake built in the grand Belle Époque tradition, became a solid stone reminder of old-world Monte Carlo (‘Mount Charles’, that is, after the 19^th-century prince who kickstarted it all).

The overcluttered façade of Hôtel Métropole features about every architectural feature you can think of

Original artwork in the hotel’s library

Much of big-ticket Monaco remains owned by La Société des Bains de Mer. The world’s oldest hospitality management company – Cardinal Pecci, later Pope Leo XIII, was an early investor – operates Monte Carlo’s casino and opera house, as well as more than three dozen cafes, restaurants, spas, beaches, golf clubs and shopping malls. Two of Monte Carlo’s holy trinity of grande dame hotels – Hôtel de Paris and Hôtel Hermitage – are held by the state-owned group. The third, Hôtel Métropole, remains in the hands of the Boustany family.

The original hotel, finished in 1889, was the work of Danish architect Hans-Georg Tersling. Leading light of the Belle Époque, Tersling designed myriad villas and mansions in this rarefied part of the world, as well as the Grand Hôtel du Cap-Martin and the most romantic part of the Monte Carlo Casino. The First World War killed France’s beautiful age, and snuffed out Tersling too, who died debt-ridden and homeless in 1920. You can see the architect’s unassuming grave in Menton’s Vieux-Château Cemetery, should you wish, perhaps after a tour of the town’s Palace of Europe Art Gallery, another of Tersling’s masterpieces.

More is more in Monaco, and nowhere is that truer than at Hôtel Métropole. Bits of what we find today, tucked down a side street, at the end of a cypress-lined Italianate courtyard, are how Tersling left it. Exactly a century later, Boustany extended the building up and out, choosing to adorn the façade of his new-old hotel with every architectural feature that Tersling left off. Which wasn’t many.

Above a Renaissance-era courtyard, a quartet of Grecian-style statues guard an elaborately porticoed entrance. Overhead, there are ornamental pilasters, pedimented windows, heavily balustraded balconies, Art Nouveau ironwork, cornices that might have been modelled on the Acropolis, and a domed corner turret from which you could fight off a siege. Monte Carlo was the original Disneyland and Tersling and Boustany went full kitchen sink to make you believe.

Part of the ‘Life in Pink’ installation, 204

Jacques Garcia has recently redesigned the hotel’s bathrooms

Step into Métropole’s AC-blasted lobby and you are fast-forwarded several centuries. Not to the modern day, but to Victorian Britain. To a stately home in the Highlands. Or a gentlemen’s club in St James’s. Heavy antique furniture, dark wood panelling, thick velvet curtains. It’s discombobulating, given the climate outside, and the fact we were in ancient Greece just a few seconds ago. Not everything at Métropole is an imitation. Those two Picasso lithographs are legit. Ditto the Bacon portrait and the Warhol on the bookshelf. Acquired by Nabil’s art-collecting son, Majid, and put on display in 2025.

Since Boustany took over, the interiors have been the ongoing work of French architect-designer Jacques Garcia. Garcia’s hotel portfolio is nothing if not diverse, ranging from NoMad New York and Wynn Las Vegas to Paris’ Maison Athénée and Le Grand Hotel in Bordeaux. In Monte-Carlo, Garcia has been busy. Mastermind of the original 1988 relaunch, the designer returned in 2003-2004 and 2020-2021 to oversee major overhauls. Last year, he was invited back again.

Hôtel Métropole has 63 suites and 62 rooms. Garcia recently spent six months refashioning 50 of the latter. The designer’s signature modern-baroque style remains – in decorative plasterwork, monochrome marble and gilded woodwork – but rooms are now lighter, calmer. Less Third Republic. More Parisian chic. The other big news is a new, 10-treatment-room spa by Guerlain. The Parisian skincare authority was up and running when Monte Carlo was still a glint in Prince Charles III’s eye. For the Métropole, Guerlain has created three exclusive treatments, including the ‘Monaco Glow’. When in Rome, or in this case...

Talking of Rome, a decade ago, Pope Francis hosted Prince Albert II at the Vatican. Should the Prince return the favour and host the current pontiff, also called Leo, by happenstance, on Métropole’s rooftop – and why not? – he’d find there a pool area designed by the High Priest of androgynous high fashion. In 2012, Karl Lagerfeld created Odyssey, an inside-outside wet-dry concept inclusive of a tree-shaded restaurant, a rather odd Greek-inspired glass fresco, and the most coveted cabanas in Monaco. From here you can see the dome of the Monte Carlo Casino, where these days they’ll let you play the slot machines in boardshorts and flipflops (also discombobulating).

A bedroom reimagined by Garcia

Part of the 'Flowers in the Air' installation, 2021

To the kitchen, the only place in Hôtel Métropole where less is more. It was Joël Robuchon who put Métropole on the culinary map. The Michelin star record holder directed the hotel’s gastronomic output from 2004 until his death in 2018. In 2023, the hotel’s flagship restaurant, Les Ambassadeurs, was suffixed with the words ‘by Christophe Cussac’, after Robuchon’s protégé and longtime Executive Chef. It took the restaurant just nine months to earn two Michelin stars, both of which it has retained.

The menu is refreshingly straightforward. The concept simple. Three flavours per dish, to highlight the quality of ingredients, and Cussac’s way of making them sing. Lamb with thyme and chickpeas. John Dory with artichoke and coriander. Monkfish with guanciale and black beans. Sardines with caviar and lemon. Squid with tomatoes and capocollo. Tuna with red pepper and pepperoncino. Turbot with olives and tomatoes. And on and on. Cooking is Cussac’s religion. The tasting menu his bible. We were left prostrate at his altar.

The Pope’s not due down this way anytime soon. It’s a Jubilee year, so he’ll mostly be opening Holy Doors in Rome. Plenty of other people will make the pilgrimage though, as they do every year. Searching for spiritual renewal, hoping to find meaning. Perhaps they’ll find it through the doors of Hôtel Métropole. There are tougher places to pay penance. If not, the craps tables across the square are always good for a spot of soul searching.

From £1,640 per night.

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