South of France villas, chosen by stretch of coast

Our south of France villas sit on three stretches of the French Riviera: the Saint-Tropez peninsula, the hills above Cannes and the Cap d’Antibes. Choose Saint-Tropez for long beach days and village evenings, Cannes for a lively town at the foot of the garden and easy trains from Nice airport, and the Cap d’Antibes for pine-shaded privacy twenty kilometres from the runway. All the residences have been visited by our team, and each one has a heated pool.

“South of France” covers a great deal of ground, from Languedoc vineyards to the lavender plateaus of Provence. When guests ask us for a villa in the south of France, though, they nearly always mean the coast, and the coast is where we work. This page is not another grid of photographs: it explains what each area is like to live in for a week, where the trade-offs lie, and which of our residences belongs to which.

If you already know you want the widest choice of styles and sizes, the full luxury villa collection shows every residence we represent. If you are still deciding between the coastlines, read on: the decision table further down condenses everything into one view.

Several of our villas are here, spread across Saint-Tropez itself and the neighbouring communes of Gassin and Ramatuelle. A week on the peninsula has a rhythm of its own: a morning swim, a late lunch by the sea, a drive into the village as the light softens. The Place des Lices market sets up on Tuesday and Saturday mornings, and most of our residences are between six and twelve minutes from it by car.

The peninsula rewards guests who want the beach to be the centre of the day. It asks more of those flying in: the nearest large airport, Toulon-Hyères, is an hour away, Nice is about an hour and a half, and there is no railway station in the Gulf itself (the tourist office points travellers to Saint-Raphaël, Les Arcs, Toulon or Nice). In July and August the village car parks are at their busiest, which is one reason a driver, included at some villas, earns its keep. Our Saint-Tropez villa page goes deeper into the village and the season.

• The waterfront north of the village. Villa Vittoria at Les Canoubiers and Villa Calista at the Pointe de la Rabiou both face the sea and both have a private helipad. Vittoria is six minutes from the Place des Lices.
• Les Salins. A quiet residential corner with sea views. Villa Amara spreads across two independent buildings on 6,000 m² of grounds, which suits families who travel together but like their own space.
• The Pampelonne side. Villa Solara in Ramatuelle is a few minutes’ walk from the beach; Villa Orea, on the Route des Plages, looks over the vineyards and is about eight minutes from both Pampelonne and the village.
• The heights of Gassin. Villa Evara, inside a gated estate, looks across the Gulf to the red peaks of the Estérel. Twelve minutes from the Place des Lices and sixteen from Pampelonne.

Between Cannes and Nice, the Cap d’Antibes is the most private of the three. It is wooded and residential, and life happens behind walls and hedges. The coastal path around the tip of the Cap passes châteaux and villas built between the 1860s and the 1920s, with views across the Garoupe bay to the Alps, while the Bay of Juan-les-Pins side looks out to the open Mediterranean.

Our residence here, Villa Zeliane on the Cap d’Antibes, sits inside a secure private estate, a few minutes on foot from a beach. It is the most fully serviced villa in the collection: a butler, a housekeeper and security staff are included, as are daily breakfast, a car with driver for five hours a day, airport transfers, one meal a week cooked by a private chef and two body treatments per stay. Guests also have access to the restaurants, pool, spa and tennis courts of a celebrated hotel nearby. It sleeps ten, so larger groups are better served in Cannes or Saint-Tropez. Antibes station is served by every type of train, including high-speed services, and Nice airport is twenty kilometres away.

Whichever coast you choose, a few things are constant. Every one of the ten is a villa with a heated pool, so an early-season week in June is as pleasant in the water as one in August. Every one has a security system and a dedicated concierge from arrival to departure, and every one can arrange helicopter transfers and boat hire through that concierge.

The differences are where the choice really lies. Some villas include a full household team, others start with housekeeping and let you add a chef or a butler. Some are in gated estates (Calista, Evara and Zeliane), two have their own helipad, and several have separate staff quarters so a chef can live in without sharing your corridor. When you write to us, tell us which of these matters, and we will only show you the residences that meet it.