The Côte d'Azur has reinvented cool — and it's stylishly affordable
There you'd be, driving past a screen of high hedges and electric gates on the French Riviera, wondering when you'll get another glimpse of the Mediterranean, and the hotel would zip past your window like a misplaced dental clinic from the 1950s. Straight out of Palm Springs, perhaps, or even Las Vegas. Long-slung, flat-topped and ever so modernist, the single-storey street front in the town of St Raphaël, between St Tropez and Cannes, is certainly eye-catching but it doesn't break the wall of overdevelopment that hems in so much of the Côte d'Azur. Nor does it promise anything approaching coastal splendour. A split second later, you'd put your foot down and accelerate off towards the glitzy Cap d'Antibes or the rocky grandeur of the Massif de l'Esterel.
But you'd be missing out. Because that austere whitewashed façade hides one of the loveliest seafronts in the south of France — and one of the coolest Côte d'Azur hotels to have opened in the past ten years. Les Roches Rouges has just had an £11 million growth spurt too, expanding into a secret cove along the coast, and last month I was first in to have a look at what's new.
The appeal is obvious as soon as you open the hotel's front door. Framed by a glass wall at the far end of its reception yawns a widescreen strip of sea and sky — and as you walk first towards it, then out onto the balcony, you realise you're not on the ground floor but right at the top of the building. Everything else (apart from one of its restaurants) drops away below you, clinging to the side of a cliff. Three floors of bedrooms, a small spa, another restaurant, a sizeable terrace: they're all there, layered up in a brilliant white slab of concrete that butts straight out into the glittering sea. It's so close, the waves seem to break right underneath your feet.
'It was built as a three-star in the 1950s and it was way past its best when we found it,' Billy Skelli-Cohen tells me when I join him for a drink on the terrace shortly after I check in. Skelli-Cohen is chief executive of the boutique hotel brand Beaumier, which rescued Les Roches Rouges from obscurity in 2018.
'Rescued' is the word, because this was not a rebuild. Beaumier's trick is to find dated but distinctive properties in extraordinary places and then work with what's already there — 'respecting the building's DNA', as Skelli-Cohen puts it. Elsewhere that means celebrating the playful, art nouveau architecture of the Grand Hotel Belvedere in Wengen, Switzerland, and preserving the muscular simplicity of a former watermill that is now La Moulin at Lourmarin in Provence.
In Les Roches Rouges' case, it's about showing off its mid-century concrete rather than trying to conceal it — and then setting it against richly textured details. The library of hardback art books, the butterfly chairs and the alarmingly moreish cocktails all seem to have more impact when placed amid such architectural rigour.
The colours, meanwhile, are muted. Think white walls, terracotta table lamps, ochre rugs and lots of cadmium red in the abstract art. Which is just as it should be when nearly every floor-to-ceiling window is a slab of dazzling blue. Almost all of them look straight out to sea.
Add two swimming pools into the mix, as well as Michelin-starred food and room rates, including breakfast, that start from £338 a night (which counts as mid-range in these parts), and it's no wonder Les Roches Rouges quickly found its way on to many top ten Côte d'Azur hotel lists.
Now Beaumier has gone a step further and invested in a second phase of expansion. Central to this new project has been an extension of the site westwards to incorporate a snack bar (focaccia sandwiches from £12), a place to launch the hotel's paddleboards and kayaks, a yoga studio and an annexe that adds 25 bedrooms, bringing the total to 67. Not surprisingly, on a coast where property prices can easily top those in Paris, it has cost a small fortune. But the money has been well spent. Les Roches Rouges can now extend its sense of ease and comfort along the whole length of this hidden (and nameless) cove. When half of Europe is jostling for elbow room hereabouts, that seems nothing short of miraculous.
Inside, the new bedrooms are as zesty as the red tuna ceviche at the hotel's main Estelo restaurant, which they serve with a sidekick of chilli (mains from £27). Designed by the Parisian architecture studio Atelier St Lazare, the rooms have the same sense of restraint as those in the main building, with polished concrete floors, more books and pops of colourful art. They have the same sense of quiet luxury too, courtesy of their lush bed linen and Grown Alchemist soaps and smells. But here the dazzling intensity of sea and sunlight seems to wash in with even greater force. Leave the floor-to-ceiling windows open at night and you worry you'll wake up with the waves breaking over your feet.
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Meanwhile, there's a new chef cooking up a storm in Récif, the top-floor gastronomic restaurant (six-course menus from £126). Previously, Alexandre Baule was at L'Alpaga, a Beaumier property in Megève in the French Alps, whose restaurant won its first Michelin star in 2023. Now he's brought his love of seasonality to the coast and is playing with the way its flavours arrive at different speeds in your mouth. Never more so than with his jelly of pastis and sea water served with a jasmine emulsion, which starts salty but suddenly turns floral across your tongue. But don't set your heart on any particular dish. Thanks to his collaboration with the sustainable St Raphaël fisherman Olivier Bardoux, Baule's menus change daily.
It comes as no surprise to learn that, once they get their electronic-wristband room keys, most guests at Les Roches Rouges don't step beyond the front door until it's time to settle the bill. For the most part they're design-conscious couples from London and America in their late twenties or early thirties, and many are honeymooning. But there are empty nesters sprinkled among them too, relishing their hard-won freedom. Usually, all are stretched out on sunloungers by the two pools, equipped with a cocktail and a little light holiday reading. Every now and again, however, one of them walks to the end of the hotel's jetty and dives into the sea.
I don't blame them for not exploring. When you've got front-row seats like this, the Med is mesmerising. All the same, it's a crying shame because half a mile up the coast Mother Nature has her own surprise to share. Up there, at Cap Dramont, the mountains of the Massif de l'Esterel break through the coast road's cordon of villas, bars and marinas to plunge their red-rocked feet straight into the sea. I wander over on my final afternoon and as soon as I leave the main forest track, the world turns raw and wild. Overgrown footpaths weave through thickets of laurel, olive trees and pine. Deep channels of seawater sparkle invitingly between the cliffs and, occasionally, I use hands as well as feet to climb. In other words, it is just like Les Roches Rouges — a wake-up call for anyone who, like me, has ever written off the Riviera as samey and soulless. Suddenly, the only thing I don't like about it is having to leave.Sean Newsom was a guest of Les Roches Rouges, which has B&B doubles from £388 (beaumier.com). Fly to Nice
Les Roches Rouges isn't the only hotel in Provence and the Côte d'Azur making a fuss of its 20th-century architecture. In Nice, the 35-room Hotel Gounod has been reborn in a shimmering, boudoir style that's the perfect match for its intricate art deco façade (B&B doubles from £138; gounod-nice.fr). Keep it in mind if you're visiting the Matisse Méditerranées show at the city's Matisse Museum this summer (until September 8; musee-matisse-nice.org). The exhibition includes loans from MoMA in New York and the Pompidou in Paris. It's part of Nice's Year of the Sea (anneedelamer.nice.fr) that also includes The Midnight Zone, an immersive installation that explores the deepest parts of the ocean.
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Meanwhile, inland from St Raphaël, two 19th-century properties are flying the flag for stylish B&B-keeping. Two years ago, the former coaching inn Le Gabriel put the hilltop village of Claviers on the map with its mix of zesty colours, big windows and playful decoration. Its five arty bedrooms and suites start from £190 a night B&B (le-gabriel.fr). Nearby, in Draguignan, the five-suite Château Pimo opened this year with a more subdued colour scheme, but the same eye for detail as well as its own spa (B&B suites from £230; chateaupimo.fr). Both lie within striking distance of the spectacular Gorges du Verdon canyon.
Further west, Aix-en-Provence's tight historic streets are always gorgeous and atmospheric. But this year the city is also honouring Cézanne, its most famous son, with a blockbuster exhibition at the Musée Granet (June 28 to October 12; museegranet-aixenprovence.fr) as well as the reopening of the Jas de Bouffan, his parents' surprisingly highfalutin' home. The gardens at the recently refurbished Hôtel Le Pigonnet offer a welcome refuge from the gallery-going (B&B doubles from £233; esprit-de-france.com), while the town's thriving restaurant scene is strong with plenty of mid-priced menus. In the centre, Les Galinas has just been awarded one of Michelin's coveted Bib Gourmands for affordable, Provençal gastronomy that includes bourride (fish stew) (mains from £18; lesgalinas.eatbu.com). The newly opened O'père on the outskirts, has a growing reputation for its deeply flavoured sauces (mains from £20; opere.fr).
• Great restaurants in Nice
Finally, to the north of Aix lies a corner of Provence that's less touristy but no less delightful. The town of Carpentras is one of its stars, thanks to its sprawling Friday market — the perfect place to scoff the divine local nectarines, as soon as you've bought them. But it's also home to spectacular hiking beneath the limestone crags of the Dentelles de Montmirail, and two top-notch wine areas. Head to the villages of Gigondas and Vacqueyras for succulent, fruity reds, and to the new tasting cellar at the Domaine de Coyeux for sweet and fragrant Muscat de Beaumes de Venise (domainedecoyeux.com). Ten miles south of Carpentras, in the riverside town of L'Isle Sur La Sorgue, the L'Isle de Leos is a new, five-star MGallery property in a former watermill, decked out in a rich cinnamon-and-chocolate colour scheme. It opens next month with enticing introductory pricing (B&B doubles from £298; mgallery.accor.com).
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