Mama Shelter Nice – the brand's first rooftop pool

On Boulevard de Riquier, a few minutes' walk from Nice's Old Port, Mama Shelter Nice took over three buildings when it opened on 13 June 2024, becoming the brand's eleventh hotel in France. One of the three structures dates from the early twentieth century; its façade was kept rather than rebuilt, and together the buildings hold 102 rooms. Benjamin El Doghaïli, who leads Mama Shelter's in-house design studio, built the decoration around Nice's own roll-call of resident painters. Up on the roof sits something no earlier Mama Shelter had offered: the brand's first rooftop pool, tiled in Bisazza mosaic. The MICHELIN Guide lists Mama Shelter Nice among its Selected hotels, a nod to a property that trades grand-hotel formality for colour, an open kitchen and a DJ booth at street level.

01The house

The hotel's oldest building predates the First World War; when Mama Shelter converted the site it kept this façade and added two further structures around a planted courtyard and flowered alleyway, roofed in retractable glass so Mediterranean light reaches down through the floors below.

El Doghaïli built the decoration on Nice's own art history. In the lobby, hand-painted frescoes nod to Matisse's collages, Braque's birds and Picasso's Vallauris-period ceramics, lit by large mirrors and hung with giant wall pieces by the artist Kate Mary.

Upstairs, cast-iron columns wear plaster capitals topped with painted bouquets of lavender, sunflower and wheat poppy – a Van Gogh still life created with the artists Lola Mercier and Beniloys, changing with the seasons. The bedroom carpets, designed by Laureline Galliot, carry the same idea into pointillist dots of colour, while white textured walls and ochre curtains recall the plasterwork of nineteenth-century Niçois townhouses.

02Rooms and suites

The 102 rooms come in four sizes. Small Mamas measure 14 to 16 square metres with a queen-size bed; Medium rooms stretch to 17–20 square metres with a queen, king or twin beds; Large rooms reach 21 to 26 square metres, including a wheelchair-accessible double and a triple with a sofa bed; and the XXL Mama Family suite links two rooms through a connecting door for 47 square metres and up to five guests, combining a king bed, twin beds and a sofa bed.

Insider tip

Open all year; rooftop pool runs April–October; check-in from 3pm, check-out by noon.

Every room is dressed in the brand's satin cotton sheets and organic toiletries, and bathrooms are lined, floor to ceiling, in a checkerboard of powdered pink tiles.

03Where to eat

On the ground floor, an open kitchen sits behind cast-iron columns painted with frescoes, facing an olive-wood bar set on a terracotta-tiled floor, with strings of light sculptures modelled on festive street lamps hanging overhead. Beniloys painted the walls and ceiling here, a graphic tribute to Matisse and to the artists who worked this stretch of coast.

The menu runs from Niçoise classics – pissaladière, panisse with tapenade, the signature coquillettes with ham – to a fixed-price lunch of starter, main and dessert for €25, or two courses for €21 (read in October 2026). On Sundays, an all-you-can-eat brunch runs from midday to four, at €42 for adults and €22 for children aged six to eleven.

Up on the second floor, the rooftop restaurant cooks over a Big Green Egg barbecue and a Josper charcoal oven, giving meat, fish and vegetables a touch of smoke, while pizza al taglio comes from the same kitchen onto terrazzo tables set under the pergolas.

04The bar

Mama Shelter Nice runs two bars: one on the ground floor that stays open through the day, and a rooftop bar that pours from morning into the evening, weather permitting. The list runs to a dozen signatures – among them Mama Loves You, built on gin, peach, lime, vanilla and basil with a white Lillet reduction, and Iconico, balancing mezcal, Aperol, elderflower, lime and cucumber – alongside alcohol-free versions of the same drinks. A stage at the front of the room hosts live music and DJ sets through the week.

05The pool

The rooftop pool – the first Mama Shelter had built anywhere – is tiled in Bisazza mosaic and screened with wicker, set among sunloungers both shaded and open to the sun. It measures ten by three metres with a maximum depth of 1.55 metres, open from April until the start of November, free of charge to hotel guests between ten in the morning and six in the evening (read in October 2026).

06The neighbourhood

Riquier is a workaday quarter just east of Nice's Old Port, within walking distance of the historic centre and reachable directly from the airport and the main station by tram. The wider city holds its own art trail close by: museums dedicated to Matisse and Chagall, and the collection at MAMAC, the city's museum of modern and contemporary art.

07Making the most of a stay

The hotel holds Green Key certification for its environmental management, including a centrally controlled air-conditioning system. Check-in runs from 3pm and check-out until noon. Five modular workshops, grouped as the hotel's meeting spaces, are available for work sessions or private events, and secure parking costs €27 a day for a car, free for minivans and SUVs (read in October 2026).

For a weekend. For a lifetime.