Althoff Hotel Villa Belrose

Althoff Hotel Villa Belrose

The road out of Saint-Tropez climbs west through the pines of Gassin onto the Boulevard des Crêtes, a private ridge of walled villas and electric gates, and near the top, in almost a hectare of terraced gardens with the whole Gulf of Saint-Tropez opening out below, stands Villa Belrose, a Florentine-style villa that has been a hotel since 1997 and is now the southernmost property of the Althoff Collection, the German luxury group owned and run by Thomas Althoff, which counts it as the jewel of a portfolio otherwise rooted in Cologne, Dresden and the Rhineland. There are 40 rooms and suites over three floors, every one with a balcony or terrace facing the sea, the pool or the garden, and a further 16 villas scattered across the surrounding hills under the Bellevue Villa Rental name, each with three to six bedrooms and access to the hotel’s kitchen, concierge and spa. The harbour is a five-minute drive down the hill, Nice airport roughly 90 minutes along the coast, and the hotel opens only from late April to early October. It has been run since around the turn of the millennium by Robert-Jan van Straaten, a very tall Dutchman who still crosses the terrace every day to greet guests, many of whom he has been greeting for years. A three-year renovation, completed in phases by the German interior designer Markus Hilzinger (also responsible for the Althoff Dom Hotel in Cologne and the Taschenbergpalais Kempinski in Dresden), has left the house in a palette of beige and blush, with marble bathrooms, parquet floors, tall glazed bays that let in the Mediterranean light, and, for the 2026 season, a gallery of photographs by Franck Gerard. The lobby is white marble with orchids in footed urns, which tells you most of what you need to know about the house style. The main dining room, Le Belrose, is led by Jimmy Coutel, who spent five years here as sous-chef from 2009 under Thierry Thiercelin, won a Michelin star of his own at Château de Valmer in 2017, ran Bergamote in Cavalaire-sur-Mer from 2020, and returned to relaunch the room in 2025 with a Mediterranean menu built on produce from Loïc de Salneuve, a grower who sells at the Saint-Tropez market. The room held a Michelin star for well over a decade, first under Thiercelin and later under Pietro Volontè, and currently has two Gault&Millau toques and a Michelin listing without the star, which it is plainly working to win back. Lunch is at Le Méditerranée beside the pool, redesigned this year to open up the view, and there has also been club l’indochine, a French-Vietnamese collaboration with the Berlin restaurateur The Duc Ngo. The spa runs to a single treatment room using Niance products and a small gym refitted in 2025, and the in-room coffee machines are Leysieffer, a German brand, chosen with the clientele in mind. What Villa Belrose offers is classic grand-hotel luxury at the scale of a large private house, with formal, attentive service, a marble-and-linen calm, and a view that does most of the emotional work from breakfast to the last drink at the bar. It is a hotel of regulars, a good share of them German, who come back for the same room in the same fortnight and expect the staff to remember how they take their coffee, and the staff generally do. Saint-Tropez is close enough to dip into for a morning at the market or a long lunch at the beach, and far enough that you hear none of it at night. The atmosphere is quiet and grown-up, closer to a Swiss lakeside hotel transplanted to the Var than to anything the town below is known for, and that, for its loyal guests, is the whole appeal. You should not come if you want to walk to the beach or into town, since everything requires the courtesy car or your own, or if you want a scene, a beach club at the door, a serious spa, or interiors with a strong point of view, as the renovation is polished and expensive but safe, not the kind of considered local character you might want from a small Riviera hotel, though the gulf below more than compensates. You should come for the terrace at dusk, a dinner by a chef who learned his trade in this kitchen, a general manager who knows his guests, and the rare experience of being five minutes from Saint-Tropez in July and hearing only cicadas. The short version: A Florentine-style villa of 40 rooms and suites on the Boulevard des Crêtes in Gassin, a hotel since 1997 and owned by Thomas Althoff, with 16 rental villas nearby, a restaurant under Jimmy Coutel, and the full Gulf of Saint-Tropez from almost every terrace.