Hotel Le Romanesque

I don’t know about you, but I don’t expect a two-star hotel to deliver exotic and rather refined romanticism, any more than I expect McDonalds to serve me vintage Champagne. The Romanesque is a poke in the eye for such snobbery.

From a central side-street, it opens immediately onto a little world of chandeliers, flowers and fancy-framed mirrors. Recent renovation has obviously been undertaken on the principle that elegance and decadence (the one segueing into the other) don’t necessarily require an enormous amount of space.

There’s a swish of class – and of crockery you really don’t want to break – about the public areas. Meanwhile, each of the eight bedrooms, all named after prominent women, has a different take on making bedroom life intriguing.

"Let-them-eat-cake" luxury

At the cheaper end of the scale, the ‘Elizabeth’ comes in tones of red which might be described as either Moroccan or bordello (depending on your sensitivity). Black furniture seems somehow appropriate.

‘Eugénie’ has a south-east Asian feel – rich colonial rather than mud hut – with a bamboo four-poster, a goddess lamp-stand and lovely brown and green bedding and drapes. More expensive, and  verging on the debauched, ‘Marie-Antoinette’ comes with baroque-black carved wood, silver bits and bobs and a sense of ‘let-them-eat-cake’ luxury.

For all this chic, the place remains warmly welcoming – and it’s in the heart of the ‘Carré-d’Or’, where Cannes folk spend their hippest evenings. So you might groove the night away and then retreat to, say, the Romanesque’s ‘Adelaide’ room. The iridescent black and silver should finish things off nicely.