Cheval Blanc St-Tropez

Cheval Blanc St-Tropez sits on the bay of La Bouillabaisse, at the western edge of Saint-Tropez, looking across the gulf towards Sainte-Maxime. It opened in 1936 as La Résidence de la Pinède and became a Cheval Blanc maison in 2019, after the architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte reworked it from top to bottom.

There are only about thirty rooms and suites, in soft whites and sand tones, and many of them open onto the sea. Ceramics by Roger Capron add touches of colour to many of the rooms. It feels closer to a private house on the shore than to a large hotel.

The hotel has its own stretch of beach along the front of the garden, with loungers on the sand and the pool just behind, and summer days pass between the two. La Vague d'Or, the restaurant of chef Arnaud Donckele, holds three Michelin stars and cooks Provence and the Mediterranean with great care; a second, lighter restaurant serves lunch outdoors.

The Cheval Blanc Spa works with Guerlain, in a handful of calm treatment rooms. In the evening the light turns gold over the gulf, and the lights of Sainte-Maxime come on across the water.