Pointe Croisette – Palm Beach, Port Canto and the end of the bay

Where the Croisette runs out of boulevard, Cannes ends in a residential peninsula facing the Lérins islands: an art deco casino site reborn, a marina one man paid for himself, and quiet shaded avenues.

Walk the Croisette east, past the Martinez and the last of the grand hotels, and the boulevard changes character. The palace façades give way to apartment buildings and gardens, the traffic thins, and the land narrows into a peninsula pointing straight at the Île Sainte-Marguerite. This is the Pointe Croisette, one of the ten quarters of Cannes, with the Bay of Cannes on one side and the Golfe-Juan on the other.

It is above all residential, with a few buildings of architectural note such as Le Marly at 104–106 boulevard de la Croisette, and it has two landmarks: a marina and a casino site with a long history.

Palm Beach

The first casino on the tip of the Croisette opened in 1929: an art deco building with Moorish touches, holding a restaurant, a ballroom, gaming rooms and two swimming pools. Like many buildings on the Riviera it was requisitioned during the Second World War and partly destroyed, reopening two years after the war. In 1962 it was a location for Mélodie en sous-sol, the heist film starring Jean Gabin and Alain Delon.

The casino closed in 1991, reopened in 2002, made its name with poker and slot machines and shut again in 2017. From January 2021 to December 2024 the site was rehabilitated as a leisure hub with a shopping gallery, a reception hall, restaurants and a seawater pool – work delayed when a concrete slab collapsed in March 2022, causing only material damage. Locals still sometimes call the tip of the peninsula the Palm Beach quarter.

Port Pierre-Canto

The marina had an unbuilt predecessor. In 1929 an extravagant scheme, estimated at 300 million francs, began beside the new Palm Beach: a marina, an 800-seat theatre, a sports palace, hydrotherapy, pools and shops, on 19,000 square metres won from the sea. The money ran out in 1934, the half-built structures stood as ruins, and the land was eventually turned into the gardens of the Jardin Albert-Ier.

In 1958 Pierre Canto, a local company director, proposed a new and more ambitious marina. The state granted his company, the International Sporting Yachting Club de la Mer, a 50-year concession in 1964; works began that year, the cost of eight million francs was met entirely by Canto, and the port was inaugurated on 19 July 1965 after eighteen months of work – the first private marina in Europe. It was named Port Pierre-Canto in September 1966, with Prince Rainier III and Princess Grace of Monaco as godparents.

The town has run the port since 2002. It holds about 530 boats of up to 90 metres on pontoons, a new central square, the Espace Grand Large, opened in May 2021, and every September it hosts the sailing and brokerage areas of the Cannes Yachting Festival.

Around the point

Inland, the Stade des Hespérides hosts the Longines Global Champions Tour of Cannes each year, bringing the world's best show jumpers to the peninsula, and beside it the Place de l'Étang is given over to pétanque. Along the shore, from west to east, run the eastern end of the public Zamenhof beach, Port Canto, Bijou-Plage and the nautical club, with the Palm Beach at the very end.

From the tip, the Lérins islands seem close enough to swim to, and on the walk back the whole Croisette unfolds, with Le Suquet at the far end of the bay.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.