Les Roches Blanches, Cassis

Frédéric Mistral, the great poet of Provence, made an old local boast famous: anyone who had seen Paris but not Cassis had seen nothing at all. It sounds like the boast of a proud local, right up to the first sundowner on the terrace of Les Roches Blanches. On one side, the white limestone of the Calanques begins, the rock that gives the hotel its name. Across the bay rises Cap Canaille, a wall of red cliff among the highest above any sea in Europe. And in between lies a little fishing port painted in ice-cream colours, where every café pours the local white wine.

Cassis is a place that runs on simple pleasures. The boats still come in with the morning's catch, the pétanque starts after lunch and nobody hurries a bottle of white. The hotel sits just outside the bustle, on the rocks at the western end of town, close enough to stroll into the harbour for dinner and far enough away for the evenings to feel private.

The house has been a seaside retreat for well over a century and wears it lightly, in Art Deco clothes of black, gold and white. Its forty-five rooms and suites face the sea, the courtyard or the pines, some with balconies, and the corner suites frame the cliffs like a postcard. The garden tumbles down through umbrella pines to the rocks, where ladders lead straight into the sea, and above it two heated pools, including a twenty-metre infinity pool, compete for the same view.

The Calanques begin a few minutes' walk from the gate, and that is the hotel's great trick. In summer, half of Provence queues to see them, by car, by boat or on foot in the midday heat. Guests here simply walk out early: forty minutes to Port-Pin, longer to En-Vau for the energetic, a swim in water still as clear as glass, and back for croissants above the sea before the first tourist boat has left the harbour.

Evenings belong to the cliff. The restaurant, Les Belles Canailles, takes its cheeky name from the rock it faces and serves bright, bistro-style Mediterranean cooking, and the Art Deco bar gazes straight at it. The rule of the house is a glass of white Cassis as the setting sun turns Cap Canaille the colour of terracotta. There is a Sisley spa with sea views, the staff will happily book a boat, a dive or a guide, and the company is mostly couples, walkers and swimmers, with money that is relaxed rather than showy.

Cassis is built on rock, and so is the hotel, which means stairs, a great many of them, between the rooms, the pools and the garden. The road in is steep and narrow, parking costs extra, and some rooms are compact. In August the concierge can seem stretched, the restaurant is not cheap, and on days of high fire risk the Calanques may close altogether.

Mistral may have been exaggerating about Paris. But anyone who has watched the red cliff glow from a balcony here, glass in hand, will be inclined to forgive him.