11 November 2026

The Best Beach Clubs in the World

By: Small Certainty

The sea has been doing a perfectly good job of entertaining people for thousands of years. This has not stopped us from constructing an extraordinary assortment of buildings beside it. Bathhouses, changing cabins, restaurants, swimming pools, and private clubs have transformed stretches of coastline into places where the business of doing very little can become surprisingly elaborate.

The best beach clubs have mastered the arrangement. They provide somewhere to swim, somewhere to sit, a competent kitchen, and staff who understand that the afternoon should proceed at its own pace. Some have acquired considerable reputations without adding much to this formula. Others have turned it into an architectural undertaking of remarkable ambition.

In Rio de Janeiro, a concrete bridge leads to a modernist swimming club suspended above the Atlantic. On the Venetian Lido, changing cabins recall an era when a day at the seaside demanded considerably more preparation. In Beirut, concrete terraces have served generations of swimmers through decades of upheaval. And in Queens, an enormous Art Deco bathhouse is emerging from half a century of neglect.

The tradition predates the modern beach holiday. During the 19th century, organized sea bathing became fashionable across Europe, encouraged by medical theories, expanding railway networks, and a growing appetite for recreation. Bathing machines gave way to changing cabins, timber pavilions, swimming pools, and restaurants. A practical solution to getting into the water gradually developed a social life of its own.

The contemporary beach club has taken this inheritance in various directions, not all of them improvements. There are establishments where the reservation system is more complicated than the architecture, and others where the sea seems to exist chiefly as a background for photographs.

Happily, there remain places that understand the original attraction. Our ten selections include old favorites, architectural landmarks, family enterprises, and the occasional grand experiment. Each has developed a character that would be difficult to reproduce elsewhere.

01. SPORTING CLUB

Beirut, Lebanon

The Sporting Club in Beirut has not spent the past seven decades trying to look younger. Its concrete terraces show their age, the changing rooms are pleasingly utilitarian, and rows of plastic loungers face the Mediterranean with little concern for contemporary fashion. It is precisely this accumulated familiarity that makes the establishment so appealing.

Founded in 1953 by George Abou Nassar, Sporting opened when Beirut was establishing its reputation as one of the Mediterranean's great cosmopolitan capitals. Abou Nassar, a graduate of the American University of Beirut, named his new venture after the Sporting Club of Monte Carlo. It was an ambitious reference for a modest establishment on a rocky stretch of the Lebanese coastline.

The location was difficult to improve upon. Situated near Raouché, the club overlooks the famous Pigeon Rocks, two imposing limestone formations rising from the sea. Three saltwater pools occupy the rocks, while restaurants, changing rooms, and sunbathing terraces form a small social world between the city and the Mediterranean.

Sporting quickly acquired a loyal clientele. Families came to swim, students gathered between classes, and regulars settled into familiar routines. The club's founder may have looked to Monaco for inspiration, but what emerged was something unmistakably Lebanese.

Its history has inevitably reflected Beirut's wider fortunes. Sporting remained open throughout the country's 15-year civil war, as well as subsequent periods of political instability and economic crisis. Visitor numbers fluctuated, but the Abou Nassar family kept the establishment running.

Three generations of the family have now been involved in the business, and some members belong to families that have visited for five generations. The same terraces have accommodated childhood swimming lessons, summer romances, family celebrations, and innumerable conversations about the state of the country.

Swimming clubs acquire their character through use, and Sporting has had plenty of it. Its worn surfaces, old umbrellas, and familiar routines are evidence of a place that has become part of Beirut's social infrastructure.

There are certainly more polished places to swim along the Lebanese coast. Few can claim to be quite so thoroughly Beirut.

02. BAGNI ALBERONI

Venice, Italy

Venice has an unusual relationship with the sea. It is surrounded by water, celebrated for its boats, and visited by millions who spend their days looking at canals, yet anyone hoping for a proper swim must generally head elsewhere. For generations of Venetians, that has meant crossing the lagoon to the Lido.

The narrow island separating Venice from the Adriatic became one of Europe's fashionable seaside destinations during the late 19th century. Grand hotels arrived, bathing establishments multiplied, and the rituals of summer holidays became increasingly elaborate. Guests reserved changing cabins, dressed for lunch, and arranged their days around the shifting requirements of sun, sea, and social convention.

At the southern end of the island, Bagni Alberoni preserves a quieter version of that world. Established in the 1920s, it occupies a broad sandy beach furnished with striped deckchairs and parasols. Modest cabins provide somewhere to change and escape the midday heat, while a restaurant serves Venetian cooking, including the seafood dishes that are a natural consequence of living beside the Adriatic.

The surrounding landscape is unusually important. Alberoni lies beside protected dunes and coastal woodland that support plants and wildlife increasingly uncommon along heavily developed shorelines. The beach feels distinctly removed from the grandeur of the Lido's northern hotels, although it has its own place in the island's cultural history.

Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, published in 1912, immortalized the atmosphere of the Lido's grand hotels and beaches. When Luchino Visconti adapted the novella for cinema in 1971, he used Alberoni's beaches for the film's exterior seaside scenes. The result helped establish the familiar image of a European summer spent beneath striped bathing tents, with immaculate clothing and an atmosphere of impending tragedy.

Fortunately, a visit to Bagni Alberoni need not involve quite so much existential difficulty. The more conventional pleasures are perfectly adequate: a swim in the Adriatic, lunch beneath an umbrella, and perhaps another hour with a book before returning to Venice.

The journey back across the lagoon provides a particularly satisfying conclusion. After a day spent doing very little, one arrives in one of the world's most celebrated cities feeling that the afternoon has been exceptionally well used.

03. MAÇAKIZI

Bodrum, Turkey

Ayla Emiroğlu was not especially interested in running an ordinary guesthouse. When she opened Maçakızı in Bodrum in 1977, the property quickly attracted a collection of writers, artists, musicians, and other visitors who appreciated her unconventional approach to hospitality. The company was interesting, the atmosphere informal, and the distinction between host and guest was frequently less important than what was being served for dinner.

Emiroğlu's nickname, the Queen of Spades, provided the establishment with its name. Her son, Sahir Erozan, inherited both the business and something of her independent spirit, moving Maçakızı to Göltürkbükü in 2000 and transforming it into one of Turkey's most celebrated coastal retreats.

The setting is a substantial part of the appeal. Whitewashed buildings occupy a hillside planted with olive trees, pines, and bougainvillea. Paths descend through the gardens toward a series of teak decks arranged along the shore, where swimmers enter the Aegean by ladder and return to loungers shaded by umbrellas and foliage.

There is no shortage of luxury, although Erozan has avoided the immaculate uniformity that makes some expensive hotels feel oddly impersonal. Interiors combine artworks, collected furniture, photographs, and objects accumulated over the property's history. The overall impression is of a particularly well-appointed private house whose owner has excellent taste and no particular desire to explain it.

Food remains central to Maçakızı's reputation. Chef Aret Sahakyan has worked with Erozan for decades, developing a sophisticated interpretation of Turkish and Mediterranean cooking. Regional ingredients appear alongside familiar dishes, while the restaurant provides the natural setting for the day's most sociable hours.

The family's influence is still apparent, even as the establishment has grown into a destination for international visitors. That is no small achievement in Bodrum, where luxury development has transformed a once relatively quiet stretch of the Aegean into a procession of hotels, villas, and marinas.

Maçakızı has changed considerably since Emiroğlu opened her doors. Yet it retains the essential quality that made her guesthouse attractive in the first place: the feeling that someone interesting has invited you to stay.

04. ROCKAWAY OCEAN CLUB

Queens, New York, United States

New Yorkers can be forgiven for occasionally forgetting that they live in a beach town. Between the towers of Manhattan and the daily indignities of the subway, the Atlantic can feel rather distant. Yet the city's coastline has long provided an escape from summer heat, and its beaches were once accompanied by some of the country's most ambitious recreational architecture.

Among the finest examples was the Jacob Riis Bathhouse, completed in 1932 on the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens. Its imposing Art Deco frontage, changing rooms, showers, and recreational spaces were designed to accommodate the thousands of people arriving at the beach from across the city. Here was public architecture conceived not for commerce or government but for the straightforward business of having a good afternoon.

The building's fortunes subsequently declined. After closing in the early 1970s, it spent decades largely unused, its monumental exterior surviving while the interior deteriorated. Finding a new purpose was complicated by the considerable cost of restoring a historic structure exposed to the Atlantic's weather.

Rockaway Ocean Club is an attempt to give the building a viable future. An $88 million restoration began opening in phases in 2026, introducing restaurants, a courtyard, and public gathering areas alongside a private swimming pool. Additional facilities, including a 28-room hotel, form part of the larger redevelopment.

The project has also provoked a debate that goes to the heart of the site's history. Jacob Riis has long been known as the People's Beach, with particular importance to New York's LGBTQ communities. The introduction of private membership facilities has raised questions about who should benefit from the restoration of an important public landmark.

The developers argue that commercial hospitality is necessary to finance and maintain the building, while emphasizing that the beach remains public and much of the restored property can be used without membership. Both the financial challenge and the concerns about access are real, and neither can be resolved simply by admiring the architecture.

What makes Rockaway Ocean Club interesting is precisely this complication. A great public building has been rescued, but restoration is only the beginning of its next chapter. The more difficult task is ensuring that the revived institution becomes as meaningful to contemporary New Yorkers as the original bathhouse was to earlier generations.

A city with hundreds of kilometers of coastline ought to have room for a few great seaside institutions. Rockaway is making an ambitious case for one more.

05. LA BOUILLABAISSE

Saint-Tropez, France

Saint-Tropez has become exceptionally good at the business of summer. Its beaches are lined with fashionable restaurants, its harbor accommodates remarkable quantities of expensive boating equipment, and its hospitality industry has perfected the art of making an afternoon feel like a significant financial undertaking.

La Bouillabaisse belongs to an older school. The establishment began as a modest seaside restaurant in the early 20th century, serving local seafood long before the town became internationally famous. Changing cabins were added in 1932, and the restaurant gradually acquired the familiar rhythms of a Riviera institution.

Its fortunes grew alongside those of Saint-Tropez. During the postwar decades, filmmakers, artists, and international visitors arrived, bringing with them a glamorous reputation that has proved remarkably durable. La Bouillabaisse welcomed its share of famous clientele without abandoning the atmosphere of a place where families returned to the same tables and employees recognized guests from previous summers.

That continuity remains central to its appeal. Regular visitors occupy preferred spots on the sand, lunch is taken seriously, and there is little evidence of the elaborate entertainment that has become compulsory at some neighboring establishments.

A renovation in 2025 by design agency Mews brought a fresh appearance to the familiar setting. Pastel blue-and-white parasols, custom director's chairs, and a sculptural bar inspired by seashells evoke the visual language of midcentury holidays without turning the club into a piece of elaborate nostalgia.

The kitchen has also evolved, with chef Julien Sebbag introducing a contemporary approach to Mediterranean cooking. Seafood, seasonal vegetables, and leisurely meals remain central, though the menu is considerably more adventurous than it might have been a century ago.

La Bouillabaisse has been updated without erasing the habits and relationships that made it successful. In an industry frequently obsessed with novelty, knowing what to leave alone is an underrated skill.

The umbrellas are newer, the cooking is more ambitious, and the setting remains reassuringly familiar. There are worse ways to spend a century.

06. JNCQUOI BEACH CLUB

Comporta, Portugal

The quickest way to spoil a beautiful stretch of coastline is often to build something intended to improve it. This has become a particular concern in Portugal's Comporta region, where a landscape once associated with rice fields, pine forests, fishing villages, and broad Atlantic beaches has attracted a growing collection of hotels, private houses, and international visitors.

At Praia do Pego, Belgian architect Vincent Van Duysen has approached the problem by borrowing from the most practical forms of coastal building. Commissioned by the Amorim Luxury hospitality group, JNcQUOI Beach Club opened in 2023 as a collection of timber structures arranged between white dunes and the Atlantic.

Arrival is deliberately uncomplicated. A wooden boardwalk leads visitors toward two principal buildings, the Cabana and the restaurant. Their forms recall fishermen's shelters, with reeds, stained timber, cane, and fabric screens providing shade and protection from the sun. A striking thatched roof gives the restaurant its distinctive silhouette without requiring a more elaborate architectural statement.

Inside, the atmosphere changes. White timber walls, woven ceilings, and accents of terracotta and vivid blue introduce color beneath a vaulted roof. Tables face the ocean, while the transition between indoor dining and the terrace is designed to be almost imperceptible. It is a building that makes considerable use of the simple pleasure of looking outside.

Van Duysen's involvement extends far beyond the restaurant. His studio designed the beach cabanas, lifeguard station, bicycle parking, furniture, and numerous smaller fittings. Even the arrangements of tables and chairs form part of the architectural composition. The apparently casual setting is, in reality, meticulously orchestrated.

The project was built using a mixture of Portuguese and Nordic timber, African thatch, and other materials selected for their suitability to the coastal environment. Such choices are not merely decorative. Timber, reeds, and shading devices all have a practical role in protecting guests from the Atlantic sun and creating comfortable outdoor spaces.

JNcQUOI is nevertheless a thoroughly contemporary luxury operation, with attentive service and a kitchen devoted to Portuguese fish and seafood. The buildings may borrow the language of modest seaside shelters, but the ambitions are rather more substantial.

The result is an interesting architectural contradiction: a place designed almost entirely from scratch that looks as though it belongs to a much older coastal tradition.

The Atlantic is quite capable of making an impression on its own. Van Duysen has been sensible enough to give it room.

07. PATIKI BEACH

Port de Sóller, Mallorca, Spain

Not every worthwhile seaside establishment requires an architect with an international reputation. Some need little more than a good cook, an enterprising family, and a sensible decision about where to put the tables.

Patiki Beach began in 2019, when five members of the Berrow family came across a dilapidated beachfront restaurant at Port de Sóller, on Mallorca's northwest coast. Michael Berrow had long entertained the idea of opening a beach club, while his niece Grace had the culinary experience to make the kitchen work. The family decided to take over the premises, despite having little collective experience of running a restaurant.

They were hardly starting with a blank canvas. The site was a collection of modest waterfront structures that Monocle likened to lock-up garages. Grace later recalled removing the deep-fat fryer, painting everything white, and seeing what happened next.

What followed was a restaurant whose reputation grew quickly through word of mouth and a decidedly modern approach to Mediterranean cooking. Grace had previously worked at Spring, the London restaurant associated with chef Skye Gyngell, and brought a particular interest in seasonal ingredients and small-scale suppliers to the project.

The early menu made much of the agricultural abundance of the Sóller valley. Local growers supplied fruit and vegetables, while dishes such as squid with herb aioli, labneh with caramelized shallots, and whole grilled fish demonstrated an interest in flavors beyond the familiar repertoire of the seaside tourist restaurant.

The family eventually handed day-to-day operations to a wider team, but the original idea remained intact: a place that felt more like an extension of home than a carefully managed hospitality concept.

The setting provides considerable assistance. Port de Sóller occupies a sheltered bay beneath the Serra de Tramuntana, with citrus groves climbing the surrounding valleys and an electric tram connecting the harbor to the inland town. The tram has operated since 1913, making it one of the more agreeable forms of public transportation on the island.

Patiki's kitchen continues to follow the seasons, with produce sourced from Mallorca's growers and a menu that changes according to what is available. Shaded seating, simple furnishings, and the nearby beach encourage guests to settle in for longer than they might initially have intended.

There is a certain satisfaction in the fact that one of Mallorca's most appealing seaside restaurants emerged from a family with a good idea, an old beach shack, and very little experience of running the business they were about to establish.

The fashionable beach-club industry has worked hard to persuade visitors that an excellent day at the coast requires a considerable number of additional services. Patiki suggests that lunch might be enough.

08. POTATO HEAD BEACH CLUB

Seminyak, Bali, Indonesia

Most architects would think twice before proposing a monumental building made from thousands of discarded window shutters. Andra Matin evidently saw an opportunity.

When Potato Head Beach Club opened in Seminyak in 2010, its enormous curved facade immediately distinguished the project from Bali's growing collection of luxury resorts. Approximately 6,600 reclaimed wooden shutters, sourced from buildings across Indonesia, were assembled into a richly textured wall whose variations in color, size, and weathering became the building's defining feature.

The plan takes inspiration from the Roman Colosseum, with a semicircular structure surrounding a central courtyard that opens toward the Indian Ocean. Restaurants, bars, terraces, and lounging areas occupy the curved building, while a swimming pool provides the familiar center of contemporary beach-club activity.

The architecture is ambitious, but its materials prevent it from feeling overly monumental. Every shutter bears evidence of an earlier use, and the irregular arrangement gives the enormous facade something of the character of an improvised collection.

Potato Head has subsequently developed into Desa Potato Head, a broader cultural and hospitality complex encompassing accommodation, food, music, art, and design. Collaborations with Indonesian makers and designers have extended the project's interest in material reuse into furniture, objects, and initiatives intended to reduce waste.

The operation is energetic, occasionally loud, and very much an international destination. Anyone seeking an afternoon of complete silence would be well advised to investigate another stretch of coast. Yet its contribution to contemporary hospitality architecture is difficult to dispute.

Where many hospitality developments borrow familiar visual references from elsewhere, Potato Head established an identity built around local materials, contemporary Indonesian design, and an ambitious program of cultural activity.

Few have found an idea quite as distinctive as building an amphitheater from thousands of unwanted shutters.

09. BONDI ICEBERGS

Sydney, Australia

The Pacific Ocean has never shown much respect for the neat white lane markings at Bondi Icebergs. On days when the swell is high, waves crash across the outer wall of the swimming pool, sending seawater cascading over swimmers and concrete terraces alike. It is an arrangement that would be difficult to reproduce in an ordinary municipal leisure center.

The swimming club was founded in 1929 by a group of local lifesavers who decided that regular winter swimming would help maintain their fitness. What began as a practical training exercise became a sporting tradition, attracting successive generations of members willing to enter the water during Sydney's cooler months.

The facilities have grown around that original purpose. Two saltwater pools occupy a narrow strip of rocky coastline at the southern end of Bondi Beach, with changing rooms, a sauna, and a clubhouse overlooking the Pacific. The competitive winter swimming club retains its membership traditions, while the ocean baths themselves are accessible to the public.

Architecturally, the complex is almost disarmingly simple. Concrete platforms, retaining walls, steps, and pool markings provide the necessary infrastructure without competing with the surroundings. The geometry of the pools creates an unexpectedly powerful contrast with the irregular movement of the ocean.

Australia has a long history of ocean bathing, with tidal pools and rock baths constructed along coastlines for public recreation. These facilities are particularly important around Sydney, where swimming is not simply a holiday activity but an established part of daily life.

Bondi Icebergs belongs to that tradition, although its extraordinary setting has made it famous well beyond Australia. Photographers admire the graphic arrangement of blue water and white concrete; architects appreciate the relationship between infrastructure and landscape. Swimmers, rather more practically, appreciate having somewhere excellent to swim.

There is something encouraging about an international design icon that continues to function much as its founders intended. No elaborate new concept has been required, and the Pacific provides more than enough entertainment.

Build a good swimming pool, put it in exactly the right place, and continue looking after it for a century.

10. COSTA BRAVA CLUBE

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

It takes a particular sort of imagination to look at an exposed rocky promontory above the Atlantic and see the beginnings of a swimming club. Most people would admire the view, perhaps take a photograph, and continue with their walk. Ricardo Menescal had other ideas.

During a camping trip to Praia da Joatinga in the early 1960s, the young Brazilian architect became fascinated by Ponta do Marisco, a dramatic headland on Rio de Janeiro's western coastline. He imagined a recreational complex that would occupy the rocks without disguising their extraordinary natural form.

Menescal acquired the site and assembled a group of founding members to finance the project. Working with architect Renato Menescal, he developed a scheme inspired by the appearance of a ship at sea, with long horizontal concrete structures extending across the promontory and toward the Atlantic.

Construction began in 1962. The architectural challenge was considerable, particularly the need to connect the different parts of a site divided by steep rock formations and exposed to the ocean. The solution included a dramatic elevated concrete bridge spanning the terrain, leading visitors toward a collection of swimming pools, terraces, restaurants, and recreational facilities.

The resulting composition is among the most remarkable examples of Brazilian modernist leisure architecture. Concrete platforms emerge from natural rock formations, horizontal structures emphasize the coastline's dramatic topography, and the swimming pools appear almost suspended between the mountains and the sea.

The project belongs to an especially inventive period in Rio's cultural history. During the late 1950s and 1960s, modernist architecture, cinema, visual art, and bossa nova were contributing to a new understanding of Brazilian identity. Menescal's own family was connected to that world: his younger brother Roberto became one of bossa nova's defining musicians.

Costa Brava quickly developed a social life to match its architecture. During the 1960s and 1970s, the club hosted dances, performances, sporting events, and family celebrations, becoming a fashionable gathering place for its members. The facilities expanded over time, creating a self-contained recreational world above the Atlantic.

Like many private clubs, Costa Brava subsequently experienced changes in membership and periods of financial difficulty. Yet the original architectural vision survived, and recognition of the complex's significance gradually increased. In 2014, Rio de Janeiro's municipal government granted the property heritage protection, acknowledging its contribution to Brazilian modernism and its unusual relationship with the coastal landscape.

The club remains a functioning social and recreational institution rather than a conventional resort. Swimming, sport, dining, and gatherings continue among the remarkable concrete structures, with preservation efforts intended to protect their architectural character.

Costa Brava is an unusually confident piece of design. Its buildings are neither concealed within the landscape nor imposed upon it as an unrelated spectacle. Instead, the architecture treats the rocks, water, and surrounding mountains as essential parts of the project.

It would be difficult to imagine the club anywhere else.

A PLACE TO RETURN TO

The great beach clubs acquire their identities over time. Buildings are altered, guests grow older, and familiar tables pass from one generation to the next. What begins as a practical arrangement for swimming, dining, and socializing can become something far more enduring.

The best places understand that the sea is the attraction. Everything built beside it should know its place.