Henri Ruhl

Few men shaped the Belle Époque hotel map of France as thoroughly as Henri Ruhl. From Paris to Cabourg, Vichy and Nice, his name was attached to dozens of palaces and casinos, but his masterpiece remains the Carlton in Cannes, the white palace that still crowns the Croisette.

A Londoner on the Riviera

Sources disagree on the man’s beginnings. French Wikipedia, which calls him Henry Ruhl, says he was born in London, held British nationality and came to France at eighteen; English Wikipedia describes him as a Swiss hotelier. What is certain is that he started in Nice, building small hotels on the heights of Cimiez with borrowed money. Their success allowed him to acquire a hotel on the Promenade des Anglais that took his name, and in 1907 he became a French citizen.

An empire of palaces

Ruhl’s rise followed the boom of the resorts. The list of establishments credited to him reads like a guide to Belle Époque France: the Scribe in Paris in 1892, the Grand Condé at Chantilly, the Grand Hôtel in Antibes, the Frascati in Le Havre in 1900, the Royal in Dinard in 1902, the Grand Hôtel in Cabourg in 1907, the Carlton on the Champs-Élysées in 1909 and a Carlton in Biarritz in 1910. At his peak he is said to have controlled nearly eighty hotels and casinos.

In Vichy, where a palace begun by the architect Antoine Chanet in 1910 had been halted a year later, he took over the project and opened in 1913 a hotel bearing his name, with 350 rooms and 300 bathrooms, the largest of the spa town’s palaces; French Wikipedia says it was run by his brother Frédéric. In Nice, on the site of the old Hôtel des Anglais, pulled down in 1909, he entrusted Charles Dalmas with a new Hôtel Ruhl of some 200 rooms, completed in 1913. It stood until 1970.

The Carlton on the Croisette

Cannes was his grand gesture. At 58 boulevard de la Croisette he commissioned the architects Charles Dalmas of Nice and Marcellin Mayère of Cannes, with the decisive financial backing of Grand Duke Michael Mikhailovich of Russia. The first building went up in 1909–1910 and opened on 30 January 1911. According to French Wikipedia, a group led by Casimir Reynaud then bought the Carlton together with the adjoining Hôtel de la Plage, which was demolished so that a second campaign, in 1912–1913, could double the palace to some 350 rooms. In 1911 Ruhl’s company also became owner of the municipal casino of Cannes, whose concession it had held since 1905.

Behind its façade of two-tone render imitating stone, with moulded cement ornament, the Carlton served partly as a hospital during the First World War, then welcomed the Riviera’s high society and, later, the stars of the Film Festival. Legend has it that its two seaward domes were modelled on the curves of the courtesan La Belle Otero, a story that remains unsourced.

Honours and legacy

Ruhl received the Croix de guerre and a British Military Medal, and was made a knight of the Légion d’honneur by decree of 23 October 1925. According to French Wikipedia he died in 1953, aged 83, at his home on rue Quentin-Bauchart in Paris. Of his empire, the Carlton is the great survivor: listed as a historic monument in 1989, restored and reopened in 2023, it again carries “Carlton Hotel” lettering reproduced from the signs of 1913.

Sources Wikipédia (FR), « Henry Ruhl » · Wikipedia (EN), “InterContinental Carlton Cannes” · Ministère de la Culture, “Cannes – Grand-Hôtel Carlton” · Wikipédia (FR), « Hôtel Ruhl » (Nice) · Vichy Mon Amour, “The Ruhl Hotel” · Carlton Cannes, “Carlton Story” · Wikipédia (FR), « InterContinental Carlton Cannes »