For design
Les Roches Rouges
Saint-Raphaël · Côte d'Azur
The Riviera between Saint-Raphaël and Cannes is not soft country. Here the Estérel drops into the sea in walls of red porphyry, and the water goes from turquoise to deep blue over the rocks. Les Roches Rouges sits on that shore, a long, low building from the 1950s that the Paris studio Festen took back to its modernist bones. White dominates, warmed by ochre, faded red and the blue of the sea, with yellow awnings pulled against the afternoon and orange butterfly chairs on the balconies. Most rooms sit close to the water and some at sea level, their terraces a few steps from the pebbles. The signature is the pool, a seawater basin cut into the rock so the sea washes over its lip, with the tower on the Île d'Or holding the view offshore.
Estelo is the reason to linger over lunch. It faces the water, and the kitchen keeps to the Mediterranean without dressing it up, fish from the day, vegetables from the Var, oil and herbs that taste of the coast. In the evening the light does most of the work, the Île d'Or turning to a black cut-out against a pink sky. La Chicoula handles the other end of the day, a bar with the loose feel of a guinguette where a drink can run on until the swifts come out. Breakfast is unhurried and taken, when the weather agrees, in the open with the sea a few metres below.
We put Les Roches Rouges here for its single clear idea, a mid-century Riviera hotel that trusts its own restraint. Nothing shouts. The design does the talking and the rock and the water do the rest, and the place ends up feeling of the Estérel rather than dropped onto it. It is honest about its scale. Sixty-eight rooms on a working coast means the seafront can fill on an August afternoon, and the pebble beach is narrow. Come at the edges of the season, take a room low and near the water, and swim off the rocks early, before the loungers are claimed. This is the Côte d'Azur with the volume turned down, which is the version worth having.
A longer reading of Les Roches Rouges: the red rocks of the Estérel, what Festen kept, and lunch at the waterline.
Read Folio No. 84 →
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On the corniche between Saint-Raphaël and Agay on the French Riviera, facing the Île d'Or, on the Estérel coast.
A restored 1950s modernist seafront hotel, reworked by the Paris studio Festen; 68 rooms and suites, many at sea level with terraces.
Estelo, for Mediterranean cooking by the water, and La Chicoula, a bar in guinguette mood.
The red porphyry of the Estérel, Cap Dramont and Agay; Saint-Raphaël and Fréjus; Cannes about 40 minutes east.
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