Hôtel Byblos

In 1967 a Lebanese businessman, Jean-Prosper Gay-Para, opened a hotel on a hillside above the port of Saint-Tropez and named it after the ancient Phoenician city of Byblos. He had built it, the story goes, in the hope of attracting Brigitte Bardot. Within months the hotel was sold to the industrialist Sylvain Floirat, whose descendants still own it, and the Hôtel Byblos became the summer address of the town for the next half-century.

History

The opening party in the summer of 1967 set the tone. Les Caves du Roy, the nightclub in the basement, opened at the same time and has remained the best-known club on the Riviera, with the same name and the same door policy through every change in music. Mick Jagger and Bianca Pérez-Mora Macías stayed at the Byblos when they married in Saint-Tropez in May 1971, and the hotel has lived off the photographs ever since. Floirat's family, through the Chevanne line, has kept the hotel independent, refusing the chains and renovating a few rooms each winter. In 2012 the French state awarded it the Palace distinction, the rank above five stars reserved for a few dozen hotels in the country.

Architecture and design

The Byblos is not one building but a village. The original scheme stacked small houses in the colours of the old port, ochre, pink, terracotta and faded green, around courtyards and a central pool, with tiled roofs, shutters and bougainvillea. The idea was that guests should feel they were in a Provençal hamlet rather than a hotel. The planning has barely changed, and the lanes between the houses still lead to the pool terrace, the restaurant and the club.

Rooms and suites

There are around ninety rooms and suites, no two alike, decorated over the years by the family with Provençal fabrics, painted furniture and local tiles, and refreshed more recently in a lighter style. Some open directly on to the pool, others have private terraces looking over the roofs of the town towards the gulf. The largest suites occupy whole houses within the village.

Dining

The main restaurant sits on the pool terrace and has changed names and chefs several times. For a decade it was run under Alain Ducasse, first as Rivea and later as Cucina Byblos. It now trades as Arcadia, with a Mediterranean menu. A second, more casual terrace serves lunch by the pool through the season. The hotel is open from spring to autumn only, like most of Saint-Tropez.

Wellness

The spa is run with Sisley, the French skincare house, with a hammam, treatment rooms and a fitness room. The pool at the centre of the village is the real wellness facility: heated, surrounded by cushioned loungers and in use from breakfast until the club opens.

Weddings and events

The Byblos is used for private parties more than for conferences. Les Caves du Roy can be privatised for a wedding or a brand evening, and the pool terrace takes receptions of a few hundred guests when the hotel is bought out. Smaller dinners are held in the restaurant or in the courtyards. Meetings are limited to small boardroom groups; this is not a hotel built for seminars.

Location

The hotel stands on Avenue Paul Signac, a few minutes on foot above the Place des Lices and its Tuesday and Saturday market, and ten minutes from the old port and the Vieux Port cafés. Beaches at Pampelonne are a twenty-minute drive, with the hotel running shuttles in season. There is no railway in Saint-Tropez; the nearest station is Saint-Raphaël Valescure, about an hour and a half away by road, and the nearest airports are Toulon-Hyères and Nice, the latter close to two hours in summer traffic. Helicopters land at La Môle. For a luxury hotel in Saint-Tropez the Byblos has the rare advantage of being in the town itself rather than on the peninsula's roads.