Lily of the Valley

Lucie Weill was a child when her father Alain, the Paris businessman, bought land on the Gigaro hill at La Croix-Valmer, at the southern tip of the Saint-Tropez peninsula. The hotel the two of them built there, Lily of the Valley, opened in 2019, and its name is hers: a lily of the valley, muguet in French, the flower her father gave her each year on 1 May. Philippe Starck designed it as a village of stone and timber pavilions in the pines, with the Cap Lardier coastal reserve and the sea below.

History

The Weills conceived the hotel around a single idea, a resort where guests come to lose weight and recover their health without the regime of a clinic. The programme took years to assemble: a wellness centre of 2,000 square metres, a team of doctors, nutritionists and coaches, and a kitchen designed with the programme in mind. The hotel opened in the spring of 2019 and joined the Leading Hotels of the World. A beach club on the Gigaro sands opened the same year.

Architecture and design

Starck built on the slope with pale local stone, raw concrete, timber and glass, in pavilions whose terraces step down the hill between pines and maquis. The design is spare: no gilding, no pattern, white walls, natural oak and linen, with the view as the only ornament. The main building holds the restaurants and bar around a terrace with a long pool facing the sea; the wellness centre stands apart with its own pools and gardens. The whole site is planted with Mediterranean species and tended as a garden.

Rooms and suites

The hotel has 44 rooms and suites spread through the pavilions, each with a terrace or garden, most facing the sea towards the Cap Lardier and the islands. Interiors follow Starck's scheme of oak, white plaster and stone bathrooms with walk-in showers. The largest suites have private pools and separate living rooms, and a few are let as a group for families.

Dining

Vista, the main restaurant on the pool terrace, serves a Mediterranean menu built around vegetables, fish and olive oil, with dishes designed to fit the wellness programmes alongside the ordinary carte. Brigantine, the beach restaurant at the Gigaro beach club below the hotel, serves grilled fish and salads at the water's edge in season, reached by shuttle or by a path through the reserve. The bar on the main terrace serves through the evening.

Wellness

The Shape Club, the hotel's wellness centre, covers about 2,000 square metres with an indoor pool, a thalasso pool, a hammam, a sauna, a cryotherapy chamber, treatment rooms and a large gym with studios. Programmes last from four days to several weeks and combine a medical consultation, nutrition, sport, coaching and treatments; the weight-loss programme is the one the house was built for. Guests on a programme eat from the same kitchen as the others, with menus adapted. A tennis court and padel courts stand in the grounds.

Weddings and events

Lily of the Valley takes weddings and private events on the pool terrace and the lawns, with the restaurant for dinner and the beach club for a party on the sand. The hotel has a meeting room for seminars and is often reserved in full by companies combining a seminar with the sports programme. Capacities depend on the configuration and are confirmed by the hotel.

Location

La Croix-Valmer is the last village before the Cap Lardier at the southern end of the Saint-Tropez peninsula, about 25 minutes by car from the port of Saint-Tropez and 15 from Ramatuelle. The Gigaro beach and the coastal path of the Cap Lardier reserve are below the hotel. Toulon-Hyères airport is about an hour and a quarter by road, Nice airport about two hours; the Saint-Tropez heliport is 20 minutes. Saint-Raphaël is the nearest TGV station. Among the resort hotels on the peninsula, this is the furthest from the port and the only one built around a medical wellness programme.