Monaco has one of Europe’s highest concentrations of great spas. It’s my most systematic recommendation, and the one greeted with the most scepticism.
When I suggest a spa morning to a client visiting Monaco for the first time, I nearly always get the same polite reaction: “we’ll see if we have time”. And nearly always, afterwards, the same sentence: “we should have done two”.
Monaco is a mineral city, vertical and dense, where you walk a great deal and are very much observed. The contrast with a morning spent in heated seawater, without a telephone, is striking, and that’s precisely what makes the experience more memorable here than elsewhere.
Thalassotherapy, the genuine local speciality
This is what distinguishes Monaco from a mere collection of hotel spas. The principality has a major marine thalassotherapy centre, with a heated seawater pool, marine circuits and an approach that is as much treatment as wellbeing. You come for a session, a half-day, or a genuine multi-day programme.
My practical tip: aim for opening time, early morning. The pool is calm, the light is beautiful, and you come out at eleven with a whole day ahead. The same session at four in the afternoon doesn’t have the same effect, and the place is markedly busier.
The hotel spas
The principality’s great houses each have their signature, and the choice depends less on quality (which is uniformly high) than on the atmosphere you’re after.
- The Métropole spa, signed by Givenchy, for haute-couture treatments and a very Parisian aesthetic. It’s the most fashion-house of the Monegasque spas.
- The Monte-Carlo Bay spa, for its bright, seaside feel and a more relaxed relationship with water. It’s the one I recommend to families.
- The Hôtel Hermitage and the Hôtel de Paris, for those who want everything (room, spa, evening table) within the same perimeter, without going out.
- And for total contrast, the Monte-Carlo Beach, technically across the border in Roquebrune, where the olympic seawater pool facing the open sea is a setting in itself.
How I place a spa in a stay
- Never on arrival day. You’ll be tired and rushed, and you won’t enjoy it. The following morning, by contrast, is the best moment of the stay.
- After a late night rather than before. It’s the most effective remedy I know for an evening at Jimmy’z, and I say so from experience.
- In bad weather, as a priority. A rainy day in Monaco is a wasted day if nothing indoors is planned, and that’s exactly where a spa transforms a day.
- Treatments book ahead, particularly in May and September. Morning slots go first, and the best practitioners are requested by name by regulars.
- Allow two hours minimum, four if you want to string together pool, hammam and treatment. An hour between two appointments achieves nothing.
