Villa Marie

Villa Marie

Up the Chemin du Val de Rian, on the wooded hill that separates the old port of Saint-Tropez from the long curve of Pampelonne, inside the commune of Ramatuelle, Villa Marie occupies three hectares of umbrella pine facing Pampelonne Bay, ten minutes by car from both the Place des Lices and the beach clubs, which is close enough to use either and far enough to hear neither. It is the Riviera house of Jocelyne and Jean-Louis Sibuet, the Savoyard couple who built Les Fermes de Marie in Megève out of reassembled mountain chalets, opened an 18th-century farmhouse near Ménerbes as La Bastide de Marie in 2000, and came south to the Var a few years later, and the group, now Maisons & Hôtels Sibuet, is run by the second generation, their children Nicolas and Marie. There are 45 rooms and suites spread across Italianate buildings terraced down the slope through the pines, and the hotel opens only for the season, from May to early October. The interiors are Jocelyne Sibuet’s own work and read like it: wild silk, coarse linen, hemp and woven raffia, brightly glazed ceramics from Vallauris, furniture and objects sourced in Italy, a veranda filled with potted palms and succulents, and a run of newer vintage suites, one of them dressed entirely in Missoni fabric. Dolce Vita, the restaurant, is a glasshouse-style room in black and white with coral accents, opening onto gardens on several levels above the pool, with Mediterranean cooking that Gault&Millau rates at two toques, a bouillabaisse that Jocelyne Sibuet names as one of her favourite dishes across all the family’s houses, and wine from the Sibuets’ own Domaine de Marie in the Luberon. The pool is a lagoon set into natural rock, in shades of celadon and green, and the Pure Altitude spa, the family’s alpine skincare line transplanted to the coast, has three treatment rooms, an outdoor massage space in the pinewood, a hammam, a sauna and a small gym. A shuttle runs down to the Place des Lices and across to Pampelonne throughout the day, and there are electric bikes for the lanes inland. This is a Sibuet hotel, which means a particular kind of decorated, layered comfort, every surface considered by one woman with very settled taste, and you will either find that warm and personal or find it a great deal, not the editorial restraint of the newer Riviera openings, but a house with a point of view that has held steady for two decades. Days organise themselves around the rock pool and the restaurant terrace, the pines keep the gardens shaded through the worst of the July heat, and the noise of Saint-Tropez stays on the other side of the hill until you choose to go down and meet it. It suits people who already know the peninsula and no longer need to be seen on it, couples on a second or third visit, and families who want the beaches without the beach-club hours. You should not come if you want to walk to the port, because the road down has no pavement and you will rely on the shuttle or a car, or if you want sand at the bottom of the garden, or a destination restaurant to anchor the trip, since Dolce Vita is a good hotel dining room and not a pilgrimage. You should come for the pines, the rock pool, a family-owned house that has been decorated with real conviction, and the luxury of choosing, each evening, whether Saint-Tropez is worth the ten minutes. The short version: A seasonal 45-room hotel in three hectares of pine above Pampelonne Bay, owned by the Sibuet family of Megève, with Jocelyne Sibuet’s layered interiors, a rock-set lagoon pool, and Saint-Tropez kept at a ten-minute remove.