Chateau De La Chevre D'Or

Chateau De La Chevre D'Or

Èze is a medieval village on a limestone peak, 429 metres above the sea, halfway between Nice and Monaco. Most people visit for the afternoon, take the photographs, and drive back down. Staying at Château de la Chèvre d'Or means doing the opposite, which turns out to be a very good idea. The hotel has been here since 1953, growing slowly by absorbing the surrounding stone houses until the village and the hotel became more or less the same thing. Your room might be down a cobbled alley behind a centuries-old doorway, and the 45 rooms vary considerably, so it is worth being specific when you book: some look straight out over the Mediterranean towards Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat and Cannes on a clear day, others face the mountain. The interiors are classic Riviera, marble bathrooms, proper furniture, nothing trying too hard. There is a two-Michelin-starred restaurant at the hotel's highest point where the views are as serious as the food, and private gardens with sculpture you stumble on unexpectedly. There is no beach and no particular connection to the energy of the coast below, which is not a problem: Nice is twenty minutes away when you want it, Monaco slightly less. What you get instead is the version of the Riviera that most people only see from a moving car window, the medieval stone and the vertiginous drop and the light on the water from high enough up that the whole coastline resolves into something coherent. This is the right hotel if you have already done the Riviera and want to do it differently, or if you simply know that you are more interested in the view from above than the scene below. The short version: Forty-five rooms scattered through a medieval clifftop village, a two-Michelin-starred restaurant, and a stillness that is hard to find this close to Monaco.