1 place Colonel de Grouchy, Haute-Marne
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Langres was built to be hard. The town stands on a bare limestone promontory, behind walls with a dozen towers and seven gates, all designed to keep people out. The winters, cold and snowy, seem to be in on it too. Clos Vauban, a house from 1866 on the ramparts, carries the name of France's great builder of fortresses. It keeps up the tough act for about as long as it takes to open the front door, and then the armour comes off.
From the street, the house shows only sober nineteenth-century stone, facing the Porte des Moulins at the entrance to the old town. Inside, a grand staircase climbs beneath high ceilings to rooms that are calm and uncluttered. Antiques hunted down at brocantes sit next to clean modern lines, and wicker from the nearby villages turns up in unexpected places. The owners, Laurent and Martine Petit, came home to Haute-Marne after decades at their celebrated restaurant in Annecy. A younger couple runs the house day to day, and both of them reappear at dinner.
There are only eight rooms and suites, every one of them bright. Colours are soft and the decor warm, a quiet reply to the stone outside. Many rooms have views of the valley, others of the walled town. On the top floor, guests in the Eiffel suite sleep beneath an iron roof frame of the kind the great engineer made famous. The bathrooms pair walk-in showers with big tubs, so a long soak after a cold day is always on offer.
The house ritual starts outside. Late in the day, the ramparts make a fine walk, with the plateau stretched out below and the wind often coming along for company. Then comes the reward, as the front door closes behind its guests and the banquettes of the bar wait inside. With a drink poured and the weather suddenly somebody else's problem, it becomes clear why the town went to so much trouble over its walls.
Dinner is at Bulle d'Osier, a room of just six tables. Valentin Loison cooks there from the kitchen garden and the forests around Langres. His partner, Anaïs Bercegeay, pours wines from the vineyards within reach of the plateau, from Champagne down to Burgundy. On a second evening, Mirabelle, the larger and airier bistro, makes a simpler alternative. At breakfast, the country bread and the local cheese are reason enough to linger.
Even a soft interior has a few hard edges. Wellness here means massages brought to the room rather than a spa, and breakfast is booked separately. With six tables and eight rooms, both the restaurant and the house need booking well ahead for a weekend. Langres itself is quiet after dark, which helps the sleep and leaves the evenings to the hotel.
That cheese makes a fitting emblem. Langres, the cheese, has an orange, wrinkled rind that looks rather stern, and a centre that gives way at the first touch of a knife. Clos Vauban has simply applied the same recipe to a house.
Woven nearby
The wicker on the walls and in the rooms is the work of basket-makers from Fayl-Billot, the wicker town a short drive from Langres; the woven walls of Bulle d'Osier are signed by the weaver Marion Roffino.
The way in climbs steps of red-carmine stone from a Langres quarry and passes the original door of wood and wrought iron. Behind it a monumental staircase with a wrought-iron rail curves up from a pale stone floor, and reception is a single rough block of pale stone, lit from below and bound with strands of wicker.
The top floor sits under an iron roof frame, left visible and painted red. The Eiffel family suite has 69 m² across a bedroom and a second space used as a sitting room or another bedroom, with king and queen beds, a bathtub at the foot of the bed, a shower, and dormer windows over the surrounding valleys.
The second dining room is the everyday one, yellow and red, lit by tall windows from the Napoleonic era, with patinated tables that once served Sunday lunches in Haute-Marne farmhouses. The menu offers three starters, three mains and three desserts that change with the garden, and in summer some tables move outside under arbours of living willow.
Below the house, more than 3,000 m² of vegetables and herbs are picked daily for both kitchens, alongside a greenhouse whose shoots turn up on the menu. Tall towers of woven wicker rise among the beds, and in the warmer months guests are invited to wander its paths, while Mirabelle sets some of its tables out among the planting.
At a glance
Where
1 place Colonel de Grouchy, 52200 Langres, Haute-Marne; on the ramparts of the walled upper town, entered through the Porte des Moulins; Langres station 2 km (TER from Paris Gare de l'Est, about three hours; transfer on request); Dijon about 40 minutes and Nancy about an hour by the A31; Paris about 2 h 45 by road
Why this one
Two dining rooms under one roof.
Tubs at the foot of the bed upstairs.
From the walls to the lamps.
The Edit Notes
Outside the summer season the hotel opens from Tuesday morning to Sunday morning, so Sunday and Monday nights cannot be booked; in summer it opens every day. Bulle d'Osier serves dinner from Tuesday to Saturday and lunch only on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, and on Saturday evening it serves the eight-course menu alone. Mirabelle closes on Thursday at lunch. A two-night stay built around one dinner at each table fits best from Tuesday to Friday.
The first floor has the tall Haussmann proportions: four rooms and the Salix junior suite, most looking over the valley, the ramparts and the Lac de la Liez. Tortuosa and Regalis look instead towards the town and the Porte des Moulins, and Tortuosa, the smallest, has a shower only. Upstairs, under the iron frame, Jeanne and the Diderot suite each have two bathtubs, and Diderot and the Eiffel family suite take up to four.
The house advises at least three hours for the six-course menu, and the team asks a few questions at the start to build it around each guest's tastes, so allergies are best mentioned when booking. No table is laid for more than six. The Chef's Table, beside the brigade at work, seats two and is offered once per service, so it has to be requested ahead. In fine weather the aperitif and coffee move outside, while the meal itself stays indoors.
TER trains from Paris Gare de l'Est stop at Langres, about three hours away, and the hotel collects guests from the station, two kilometres off, on request. By car, the A31 exits Langres-Sud and Langres-Nord bring the town within reach of Dijon and Nancy. The hotel's own car park has fifteen uncovered spaces, subject to availability, with two charging points. Access for reduced mobility is by ramp and lift, and Salix is the adapted room.
The price question
The money buys a small house where both restaurants are downstairs, a room with a bath in all but one case, and a kitchen garden supplying the plates. It does not buy a resort: there is no spa or pool, massages are arranged by an outside therapist, and outside summer the house closes on Sunday and Monday nights. The real comparison is a hotel in Langres plus a dinner at Bulle d'Osier.
Book it for two nights between Tuesday and Saturday, with one dinner at Bulle d'Osier and one at Mirabelle, a room on the valley side and the dates fixed around the restaurant calendar. A Sunday-night arrival outside summer, a group larger than six for dinner, or a stay planned around spa treatments is better placed elsewhere.
Le Cèdre
A Beauvallon Collection hotel in the centre of Beaune, facing the old ramparts: 40 rooms and suites around a wooded garden, the restaurant Clos du Cèdre in a winegrower's house of 1876, and a Nuxe spa in a vaulted stone cellar.
Hôtel Sainte-Victoire
Fifteen rooms in a small modern hotel at Vauvenargues, on the northern side of Montagne Sainte-Victoire, all facing the mountain, with a south-facing outdoor pool and the restaurant La Table.
The Extra Edit
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