Chateau de la Messardiere

Chateau de la Messardiere

Built in the 19th century as a wedding gift from a cognac merchant to his daughter, the Château de la Messardière spent the 1920s hosting the Parisian aristocracy for parties that apparently did justice to the setting, and has been accumulating reasons to visit ever since. It sits on twelve hectares of pine, cypress, jasmine, and rosemary above Pampelonne Bay, the Gulf of Saint-Tropez visible in one direction and the Ramatuelle vineyards in the other, and the arrival through the gates and up through the gardens still feels like an event. Joined the Airelles Collection in 2019 and reopened after renovation in 2021 with Palace status. Eighty-six rooms and suites in pastel yellows and oranges, terracotta floors, canopy beds, private terraces or balconies, the best ones with sea views from both the bedroom and the terrace. Four outdoor pools including a dedicated lap pool in the gardens. The property is genuinely grand, in scale and in spirit, and that grandeur is either the reason you are here or a reason to consider something more discreet, like hotel Pan Dei which is from the same Airelles group. Five restaurants: La Table de La Messardière with a daily-changing Mediterranean menu in the gardens, Palladio for Italian on the pool terrace, Matsuhisa for pan-Asian and Peruvian-Japanese with Gulf views, Les Tables du Jardin for dinner in the gardens. Jardin Tropézina, the beach club on Plage Pampelonne with a restaurant by Jean-François Piège, open for lunch and dinner with live music as the evening comes in. The Valmont Spa handles the rest. A shuttle runs to the beach and to Saint-Tropez around the clock, Mini Mokes are available for the vineyards and the back roads, and the Summer Camp children's villa with its own pool and treehouse means this is one of the few properties in the area that genuinely works for families without making everyone else feel like they are at a children's party. This is Saint-Tropez at its most committed, grand in both scale and atmosphere, and unapologetically so; the pool terrace here is a destination in its own right, and the kind of summer crowd it attracts is part of what the hotel is selling. Short version: A 19th-century château above Pampelonne Bay with 86 rooms, five restaurants including Matsuhisa and Jean-François Piège's beach club, the Valmont Spa, four pools, and twelve hectares of Provençal gardens. The grandest address in Saint-Tropez and deliberately so.