La Réserve Ramatuelle Hotel, Spa and Villas

From the road that climbs out of Ramatuelle towards the Cap Camarat lighthouse, the only sign of La Réserve Ramatuelle Hotel, Spa and Villas is a row of umbrella pines and a few white walls set low against the slope. The sea is below, the bay of Pampelonne to the north, and the crowds of Saint-Tropez stay out of sight. Michel Reybier opened the house in 2009 as the second of his La Réserve addresses, after Geneva, and it was conceived from the start as a place to recover rather than to be seen.

History

The site was a 1970s hotel on a large plot of maquis and pines above the coast. Reybier bought it and had it rebuilt by the architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte, who kept the footprint low and spread the rooms through a series of pavilions. The hotel opened in 2009. The spa, run under the Nescens name of the Reybier group's Swiss clinic, was the point of the project: longer stays, medical check-ups and programmes of a week or more, in a resort setting.

The restaurant, La Voile, gained a Michelin star in 2011 under Eric Canino, who had come from Michel Guérard's kitchens at Eugénie-les-Bains and brought the same light approach. A set of private villas was built on the hillside around the hotel in the years after the opening.

Architecture and design

Wilmotte's buildings are white, flat-roofed and horizontal, with wide terraces, pergolas and walls of glass that slide open onto the view. Interiors are restrained: pale stone floors, linen, oak and little colour, so that the sea and the pines do the work. The main pavilion holds the restaurant and bar with a terrace that runs the length of the facade; the pool sits below it on a lawn with the bay beyond. Paths through the garden link the room pavilions, and the slope means that most rooms have an uninterrupted horizon.

Rooms and suites

The hotel has 28 rooms and suites, 19 of them suites, each with a terrace or a garden facing the sea. The largest suites have private pools. Around the hotel stand fourteen villas of two to five bedrooms with their own pools, gardens and staff, let by the week with full access to the hotel. They are the choice of families and of guests who want Saint-Tropez without staying in it.

Dining

La Voile, the restaurant on the main terrace, holds a Michelin star and serves Eric Canino's menu of Mediterranean fish and vegetables with olive oil in place of butter, in keeping with the spa. Lunch is served by the pool. The hotel's beach club on Pampelonne, reached by shuttle, serves a simpler menu at the water's edge in season.

Wellness

The Spa Nescens covers about 1,000 square metres: an indoor pool, hammam, sauna, a dozen treatment rooms, a gym and consulting rooms where the clinic's doctors run check-ups and the better-living programmes of four to seven days. The Nescens programmes, with their medical screening and nutrition, are the reason many guests book, and the restaurant's menu is built around them.

Weddings and events

La Réserve Ramatuelle takes weddings and private events on the terraces and lawns around the pool, with the restaurant for the dinner, and the whole hotel can be reserved with its villas for a wedding party. There is a meeting room for seminars of a small group, and the villas serve as a base for family gatherings. Capacities are confirmed by the hotel's events team.

Location

Ramatuelle is the village behind the Pampelonne beaches on the Saint-Tropez peninsula. The hotel is about ten minutes by car from the village and from the Pampelonne beach clubs, and twenty from the port of Saint-Tropez. Toulon-Hyères airport is about an hour and a quarter, Nice airport two hours by road or forty minutes by helicopter to the Saint-Tropez heliport. Saint-Raphaël is the nearest TGV station, about an hour away. Among the resort hotels on the peninsula, this is the one built for quiet rather than for the port.