70 chemin du Pinet, Var
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Before the superyachts and the beach-club bills, Saint-Tropez was a fishing village with a gift for summer. In the sixties, the screen's biggest names walked barefoot through the sand, and the cafés on the port served fishermen and film crews at the same tables. Nobody had yet thought of a bottle of rosé with a sparkler in it. Lou Pinet, a few minutes from the Place des Lices, is a way back to that village. A chic little time machine of thirty-four rooms in three pale villas around a great blue pool, it is retro without ever tipping into kitsch.
The trick is restraint. The Pariente family, whose Crillon le Brave looks out at Mont Ventoux, wanted a family house in the spirit of that decade, and Charles Zana gave it the period's palette rather than its props. The crafts are the ones the old Riviera loved, pottery from Vallauris and glass from Biot, and the headboards are tapestries made by hand. Gardens scented with pine and jasmine run past borders of lavender to a small garden of aromatic herbs.
Most rooms open onto a private garden or terrace, and on the ground floor French doors lead almost straight into the water. Books lie about and the robes are trimmed in red, so the rooms feel collected over years rather than delivered in a single season.
The pool, one of the largest in Saint-Tropez, plays the lead, just as the pool did in La Piscine, the great sixties film shot in a villa in the hills nearby. Loungers and hammocks line its edge, and lunch from La Terrasse can come to the sunbed, lobster salad and all. In the bar, guests play backgammon over pastis, which is about as busy as the old village ever got. Below ground, in a cool space like a grotto, the spa works with Tata Harper products.
Evenings are when the time machine lands back in the present. The restaurant is a Beefbar, the Monaco-born steakhouse, serving wagyu and Chilean sea bass on terraces above the pool, and in summer its tables are hard to come by. It is the most modern thing about the house, and the one place where today's Riviera shows through.
There are trade-offs. Lou Pinet is not on the sea and has no beach of its own, so the sand means the hotel shuttle to the Tahiti beaches, although the village itself is a short walk away. For anyone who finds the old Saint-Tropez far more interesting than the new, the distance from today's scene is part of the charm.
In La Piscine, the characters lounge by the water and wait for something to happen. At Lou Pinet nothing is supposed to happen at all, which is exactly how the village used to like its summers.
The name
The hotel takes its name and its emblem from the pine: two old umbrella pines stand in the garden and are the first thing guests pass on arrival.
The three houses of the hotel stand around a heated pool fifteen metres long, which the hotel counts among the largest in Saint-Tropez. Loungers line its stone edge under red-and-white parasols, hammocks hang on the lawn, and La Terrasse serves lunch through the afternoon a few steps away. Two old umbrella pines, the hotel's emblem, shade the garden around it.
The Superior Suite sits on the garden level, its French windows opening straight onto the lawn and the loungers around the pool. It measures about 50 m², sleeps four and has a separate sitting area. The Prestige Rooms, smaller, lie on the ground or first floor and open onto the herb garden or the pool; for doors onto the water, ask for the ground floor.
The outdoor bar runs the length of the restaurant beneath a roof of woven canisses, with old crab pots turned into hanging lamps and low sofas in the shade. Indoors, a bright room with banquettes is set up for reading, cards or backgammon over a pastis. A drink needs no booking; in the evening the bar shifts to signature cocktails.
A few steps at the bottom of the garden lead down to the spa, which the hotel describes as a secret grotto of wood panelling, plants and warm colours. It has two treatment rooms, one for two people, and a hammam, with Tata Harper facials, a Leonor Greyl head spa and Talm pre- and postnatal massages. The cabins are not step-free.
At a glance
Where
70 Chemin du Pinet, 83990 Saint-Tropez, Var; in the residential Pinet quarter, a few minutes from the Place des Lices and the town centre. Saint-Tropez La Mole airport 18 km, Toulon-Hyères 54 km, Nice Côte d'Azur 100 km, Marseille Provence 147 km; Saint-Raphaël-Fréjus station 42 km, Les Arcs-Draguignan 43 km
Why this one
Three houses open onto it.
Charles Zana, rooms to bar.
Beefbar, every evening in season.
The Edit Notes
The categories split by outlook. Superior Rooms and Deluxe Junior Suites face the garden, the Junior Suites with a private terrace among orange and lemon trees, and the hotel calls these the calmer rooms. Prestige Rooms, Prestige Junior Suites and both suites look onto the pool, which is where the life of the hotel happens all day. Deluxe Rooms can face either side, so it is worth stating the preference when booking rather than leaving it to allocation.
Dinner on site means Beefbar, which serves every evening in season and takes diners from outside the hotel as well as residents. The hotel itself advises reserving a table in advance in high season, and bookings run through the restaurant's own line and online system, not the room reservation. Fix the evenings when the room is booked. La Terrasse covers lunch and the afternoon by the pool, and room service runs around the clock for a quiet night in.
Lou Pinet opens for the season only: in 2026 from 13 May to 3 October, with dates that change each year. The hotel has no beach of its own; the concierge arranges places at beach clubs, and a hotel shuttle runs to the Place des Lices and to the Tahiti beaches at the northern end of Pampelonne. Guests who want to walk to the sea from their room are better placed in a hotel on the shore.
Junior suites sleep three; the Superior Suite, on the garden level by the pool, and the Prestige Terrace Suite, on the first floor with its own entrance and two terraces, sleep four. Several categories connect. Children get their own welcome, with cots, baby baths and high chairs on request. Two rooms are adapted for reduced mobility, and the restaurants, bar and pool terrace are step-free, but the pool has no lift and the spa cabins are not accessible.
The price question
The money buys a summer base with the feel of a private villa: a large heated pool in a pine garden, a house designed down to the ceramics, and a lively dinner without leaving the grounds. It does not buy the sea. Beaches and the port need the shuttle or a car, the pool is the shared centre of the hotel, and the season ends in early October.
It works for a week of pool, garden and dinners close to home, with the beaches and the village as short outings, and for families or friends who take connecting rooms or a four-person suite. Travellers who want to wake facing the water, or to stay in the village lanes, are better placed elsewhere.
Villa Marie Saint-Tropez
Above Pampelonne Bay in Ramatuelle: 45 rooms and suites, each with a terrace or balcony facing the sea or the gardens, and a heated pool set into the rock.
Hôtel La Ponche
In the heart of the old village of Saint-Tropez: rooms, suites and apartments decorated by Fabrizio Casiraghi, with the Bar Saint-Germain-des-Prés-La Ponche.
The Extra Edit
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