Lily of the Valley

Philippe Starck drew the whole thing, and for once his hand is quiet. The buildings step down a pine-covered hill toward the bay of Cavalaire, pale stone and long horizontals, terraces that hold the sea in front of you and shade behind. Below runs Gigaro, a wide arc of soft sand that stays wild at its far end where the Cap Lardier reserve begins. Rooms and suites, forty-four of them, look mostly at the water, and the best open straight onto a garden or a private pool. Starck took his cue from a fantasy of antiquity, and you feel it in the columns and the pergolas, though the comfort is entirely of now.

The table

The kitchen here has a job most kitchens do not. Vista is the main room, glass-walled above the pines, where the cooking leans Mediterranean and light without turning into penance. Down on the sand the beach club splits in two, Brigantine for a proper lunch and Pépé for something simpler with your feet near the water. There is a menu built around the house method, counted and considered, and a menu for people who are on holiday and want the rosé. Both are taken seriously, which is the point.

Why it's in VANE

What sets it apart is the Shape Club, more than two thousand square metres given over to movement and treatment, with two pools and a programme that runs from a gentle detox to a hard sporting week. You can come to lose weight or you can come to lie down, and the hotel is fluent in both while pushing neither. That balance is rare on this coast. Saint-Tropez is twenty minutes away when you want it and easy to forget when you don't. Lily of the Valley reads the Riviera as a place to feel better, not only to be seen, and it holds that line with conviction.