Ask most people where French celebrities go outside Paris, and Cannes is the instant answer. The film festival, the Croisette, the red carpet — for one week every May, the city becomes the most photographed place in France. But here is the twist: being seen everywhere is not the same as being loved somewhere.
If you follow where stars actually spend their summers — yachting into a harbor, lunching at a beach club, buying property, posting from vacation rather than a premiere — a different picture emerges. Saint-Tropez, not Cannes, is the place they keep coming back to. Cannes is where they perform. Saint-Tropez is where they return.
Cannes Has the Numbers. Saint-Tropez Has the Soul.
Cannes deserves its reputation. The festival draws roughly 30,000 professionals and 5,000 journalists each year. Getty alone catalogues more than 74,000 celebrity sighting images from the city. Vogue estimated $203 million in Instagram earned media value for the 2025 Cannes ecosystem. Tom Cruise, Pedro Pascal, Scarlett Johansson, Demi Moore — the marquee names still show up in force.
Saint-Tropez plays a different game. The volume is lower, but the attachment runs deeper. Brigitte Bardot bought La Madrague here in 1958 and essentially invented the modern celebrity Riviera. Today, Kylie Jenner geotags Saint-Tropez on Instagram, the Clooneys celebrate birthdays at Club 55, Bella Hadid appears on the port, and Victoria Beckham's holiday wardrobe makes Harper's Bazaar. These are not work trips. They are chosen summers — and that is the distinction that matters.
Eight Destinations, One Question
We looked at eight places celebrities actually use in France outside Paris: Saint-Tropez, Cannes, Antibes and Cap d'Antibes, Biarritz, Deauville, Nice, Lyon, and Marseille. Some are full cities; others are small resort towns — but all of them appear regularly in celebrity travel coverage, and all of them tell a different story about French glamour.
Our focus was simple: where do stars go when nobody is forcing them to be there? Repeat holidays, property ties, iconic hotels and beach clubs, and social posts from leisure rather than obligation weighed more heavily than a single festival appearance. Official tourism boards, hotel histories, festival records, and reporting from Reuters, Vogue, People, and Harper's Bazaar formed the backbone of the research — not gossip columns or unsourced "where celebs go" lists.
How the Cities Stack Up
Every destination was assessed on five things that actually shape celebrity affection: repeat leisure visits, festival and event pull, residential ties, media visibility, and the strength of the luxury-hospitality scene. Here is how they ranked.
| Destination | Overall | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Saint-Tropez | 93/100 | The definitive celebrity summer base — Bardot's legacy, Byblos, Club 55, yacht culture, and today's Jenner-Hadid-Beckham circuit. |
| Cannes | 76/100 | Unmatched festival visibility and Palace hotels — the world's greatest celebrity stage, if not its most intimate hideaway. |
| Antibes / Cap d'Antibes | 70/100 | Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc and the amfAR gala — the Riviera's most refined celebrity enclave during Cannes season. |
| Biarritz | 59/100 | Chanel heritage, Hôtel du Palais, and periodic fashion-moment spikes — chic, but not constant. |
| Deauville | 57/100 | American Film Festival glamour and named beach cabins — cinematic, seasonal, and distinctly Norman. |
| Nice | 50/100 | Heritage luxury at Le Negresco and celebrity-owned villas — a support city for the Riviera lifestyle. |
| Lyon | 37/100 | A serious film and arts capital — prestigious, but not a celebrity resort town. |
| Marseille | 33/100 | Major film-shoot destination — culturally huge, but not a repeat-holiday magnet for stars. |
City by City: Where the Stars Actually Go
Saint-Tropez — The Undisputed Favorite
No French town outside Paris has a celebrity origin story like Saint-Tropez. Brigitte Bardot's purchase of La Madrague in 1958 turned a Provençal fishing port into global glamour shorthand. Hôtel Byblos — where Mick Jagger, Jack Nicholson, Cher, and Clint Eastwood have all passed through — and Les Caves du Roy remain port-side institutions. Club 55, born from the set of And God Created Woman in 1956, still draws Amal and George Clooney for long lunches.
The rhythm today feels unchanged in spirit: superyachts anchor for Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez (250 boats, 4,000 crew), polo and tennis events fill the summer calendar, and the Jenner sisters, Brooklyn Beckham, Bella Hadid, and the Beckhams keep the paparazzi busy without a red carpet in sight. Joan Collins maintains a residence here. Vanessa Paradis' Provençal domain nearby has been celebrated in the French design press. Saint-Tropez is not a cameo — it is a habit.
Cannes — The World's Biggest Celebrity Stage
Cannes wins on spectacle every time. The Palais des Festivals draws 4,000 journalists, 2,000 media outlets, and 280 photographers. Six luxury five-star hotels line the Croisette, including Palace addresses like Hôtel Martinez, the Majestic, and the Carlton. Demi Moore posted from Cannes 2026; the official jury that year included Park Chan-wook and Ruth Negga.
The catch is that most of this traffic is professional. Stars arrive because the film industry, luxury brands, and the global press converge here — not because they are choosing their favorite French escape. Cannes is obligation dressed in couture. Spectacular, essential, and impossible to ignore — but a stage, not a sanctuary.
Antibes and Cap d'Antibes — The Quiet Annex
For a certain tier of wealth, Cap d'Antibes may be the most elite address on the Côte d'Azur. France.fr describes Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc as a legendary celebrity destination, and the annual amfAR gala brings Adrien Brody, Spike Lee, Rami Malek, Eva Longoria, and Lizzo to its terrace. Many Cannes-season stars effectively use Antibes as a more private perimeter — but it functions as an extension of the Riviera machine rather than a standalone all-season favorite.
Biarritz — Old Glamour, New Spikes
Biarritz carries real pedigree. Coco Chanel opened her first couture house here in 1915, and the town has never quite shaken its association with her name. Hôtel du Palais remains a glamour anchor. The Chanel Cruise 2026/27 show brought A$AP Rocky, Nicole Kidman, and Marion Cotillard to the Basque coast, while Kristen Stewart presided over the Nouvelles Vagues festival. The pattern is stylish and periodic — less a year-round celebrity migration than a series of beautifully timed moments.
Deauville — Norman Cinema Royalty
Normandy Tourism calls Deauville "the place to be for American celebrities," and the American Film Festival — running since 1975 — gives the claim substance. Pamela Anderson, Kim Novak, and Zoey Deutch have all appeared at recent editions. The town's famous beach cabins bear star names, and Barrière's three Deauville hotels become the festival's operational home for talent and media. Deauville is polished, cinematic, and unmistakably elite — but narrower and more seasonal than Saint-Tropez's decades-long summer rhythm.
Nice, Lyon, and Marseille — Important, but Different
Nice holds its own through heritage luxury. Le Negresco's guest book runs from Charlie Chaplin and Ava Gardner to Marion Cotillard and Elton John, whose Riviera villa sits above the city. Joan Collins posts from Nice on Instagram. Yet much of the celebrity traffic here looks like spillover from Cannes and Monaco rather than exclusive devotion to Nice itself.
Lyon is a formidable film and arts city — the Festival Lumière has hosted Michael Mann, Tim Burton, Jane Campion, Clint Eastwood, and the Coen brothers — but its identity is cultural, not resort-driven. Marseille ranks second in France for film shoots after Paris and hosts a dense festival calendar, yet it lacks the repeat-holiday mythology, iconic celebrity-only venues, and property lore that define the true favorites.
What Social Media Reveals — and What It Hides
Raw visibility still favors Cannes by a wide margin — 74,000 Getty images and $203 million in Instagram value tell that story clearly. But scroll through Saint-Tropez posts and the tone shifts. Kylie Jenner geotagging the port in July 2025. The Clooneys at a birthday lunch. Bella Hadid on the harbor in May 2026. Victoria Beckham's holiday looks in Harper's Bazaar. None of these are premieres. They are summers chosen freely.
Biarritz and Deauville show narrower but real traction — Nicole Kidman in town for Chanel, Zoey Deutch and Kristen Stewart at Deauville's festival — proving both still pull headline names, just in shorter bursts tied to brand or film calendars. And remember: many stars deliberately avoid geotags, use private accounts, or structure property ownership through companies. The signal is strong, but never complete.
The Places That Built the Myth
Saint-Tropez's celebrity infrastructure is specialized rather than massive. Hôtel Byblos and Club 55 are institutions with decades of roll-call history. Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez, polo tournaments, and Porsche gatherings fill a leisure calendar that runs all summer — not for one week in May. Cannes, by contrast, dominates on scale: 30,000 festival professionals, Palace hotels on every corner, and a media apparatus that turns the Croisette into a global broadcast studio once a year.
Deauville offers elegance on a smaller canvas — named beach cabins, Barrière hotels, and a festival that has run for half a century. Biarritz layers inherited glamour at Hôtel du Palais with modern fashion spikes. Antibes rounds out the Riviera with the amfAR gala and Eden-Roc, where France.fr explicitly calls the hotel a palace destination of celebrities. Each place has its lane. Saint-Tropez owns the summer.
From Bardot to Bella Hadid: Seventy Years of Saint-Tropez
Saint-Tropez did not become a celebrity town overnight. It accumulated the myth slowly — one film, one purchase, one legendary hotel at a time.
- 1956 — And God Created Woman puts Saint-Tropez on the world map. The film crew's canteen becomes Le Club 55.
- 1958 — Brigitte Bardot buys La Madrague and anchors the town's celebrity identity for generations.
- 1960s–70s — Hôtel Byblos and Les Caves du Roy become the port's enduring glamour addresses.
- 1980s–2000s — The yacht-and-beach-club summer circuit solidifies for international stars.
- Today — Les Voiles, polo, and recurring sightings from Jenner, Hadid, Beckham, and Clooney keep the pattern alive.
The Verdict
Cannes remains the largest celebrity showcase in France outside Paris — no serious argument there. Antibes may be the most refined auxiliary enclave on the coast. Biarritz and Deauville retain real glamour and still draw first-rank names. Nice keeps its heritage appeal through Le Negresco and celebrity-owned villas above the Baie des Anges.
But only Saint-Tropez combines origin story, habit, symbolism, current sightings, luxury infrastructure, and repeat off-duty usage into one coherent pattern. From Bardot's La Madrague to today's superyacht summers, the town offers celebrities something Cannes cannot: a ready-made ecosystem of privacy, harbor life, beach clubs, and prestige rituals they choose year after year — not because they have to, but because they want to.
Cannes is where celebrities perform. Saint-Tropez is where they return.