If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.
Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (EUR309.09), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.
When it comes to hotels, we’re usually more concerned about the beds indoors, but at Domaine de Chalamon, a 16th-century bastide magically turned into a chic, pastel-hued home as part of the Fontenille famille, we’d rather spend time in its six gardens, which are lovingly cultivated by Dominique Lafourcade. They could easily compete for the loveliest in Provence with their boxwood hedging, trim topiary, cypress, pine and plane trees, and dainty parterre, rolling out into lush olive groves. There’s ample time for frolicking in the lavender fields in the surrounding Alpilles, but we’re happy to read a book on Van Gogh under the arbour, linger over a picnic or play gentle tennis games until afternoon pâtisserie, Med-style dining and – we suppose – returning to those indoor beds to snooze.
Smith Extra
Get this when you book through us:
A bottle of Fontenille wine in your room on arrival
Noon, but flexible, subject to availability. Earliest check-in, 4pm.
Prices
Double rooms from £291.17 (€340), including tax at 10 per cent. Please note the hotel charges an additional local city tax of €1.15 per person per night on check-out.
More details
Rates include a buffet breakfast of viennoiseries, breads, cakes, charcuterie, cheeses, yoghurt, fruit, cereal and eggs your way.
Also
Two of the hotel’s rooms are suitable for wheelchair users, and the lobby and public bathroom are accessible.
Hotel closed
The hotel opens at its greenest, from May to the beginning of November.
At the hotel
Tennis court, 15 acres of gardens, orangery, lounges, free WiFi, charged laundry service, adaptor plugs to borrow. In rooms: TV, minibar with free soft drinks, air-conditioning, and Susanne Kaufmann bath products.
Our favourite rooms
You’ll want your own little patch of plant-based loveliness, so go for the Garden Suite, Terrace Suite or Prestige Garden Suite.
Poolside
Domaine de Chalamon’s heated swimming pool is surrounded by trim box hedges and topiary arches, with pink parasols and white sunloungers neatly laid out around the edges.
Packing tips
OK, so maybe you’re no Van Gogh or Picasso, but bring the paintbox and brushes anyway, if the region can eke the best work out of the greats, it should shake something loose in you too.
Also
The architect who worked on the hotel’s conversion, Alexandre Lafourcade, has a sweet familial connection to it, having worked on the bastide previously with his father; and his mother Dominique made the gardens as spectacular as they are today.
Pet‐friendly
Pups and cats can enjoy this leafy haven too for free; they can stay in all rooms, and bowls and baskets will be provided. See more pet-friendly hotels in Provence.
Children
Children can stay – and go free-range – here, but it’s not really tailored to tots. A baby-listening service is available on request.
It’s all about the alfresco – enjoy an aperitif under one of the pink-tasselled umbrellas.
Dress Code
Think ‘flower fairy’ with botanical prints, flowing emerald silks and petal-like layering.
Hotel restaurant
Though there's no traditional restuarant here, only a short walk or drive away is Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, where there's no short of options to keep bellies full from dawn to dusk.
Hotel bar
A bonus of being part of the Fontenille hotel-group famille means a steady flow of wines from the vineyards it also owns. Drinks can be taken in the dining room or lounges, but we guarantee you’ll gravitate to the doors that are always thrown open to the green to toast gardener Dominique Lafourcade’s impressive efforts with wine, champagne or a cocktail garnished with homegrown picks.
Last orders
Breakfast is 7.30am to 10.30am. Drinks are served till 10.30pm.
Domaine de Chalamon sits on 15 acres of gloriously tended gardens just outside the Vincent Van Gogh-inspiring South of France village of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence.
Planes
Avignon Airport, a 30-minute drive away, is the closest, with a limited number of domestic and European connections. But Marseille (an hour away) and Montpellier (90 minutes away) both have a wider spread of direct routes. The hotel can help with transfers; from Marseille they’re €286 one-way for three guests or €306 for a seven-person van.
Trains
Avignon station, which has direct links with Marseille and Montpellier, is a 30-minute drive away. Transfers can be arranged from €84.
Automobiles
A car will come in handy if you want to explore beyond the hotel’s tree-lined drive, especially for hopping between Provence’s petits villages. There’s free parking onsite.
Worth getting out of bed for
Eat your heart out, Frances Hodgson Burnett, because Domaine de Chalamon has no less than six secret gardens, some with topiary, some with artfully arranged boxwood hedging, one planted with herbs and vegetables… And then there’s the olive trees that run for acres, a drive lined with plane trees, cypresses guarding the gate, and beyond, the verdant majesty of the Alpilles (or its purple hazes of lavender in season). You could just soak in the greenery with a novel or glass of Provençal wine under the hotel’s arbour, or you could play tennis, frolic in the pool, practice yoga (for an extra charge) soundtracked by birdsong and scented with pine, or hop on an e-bike (the hotel can help with hire) to zip through the scenery. Taste wines and oils at local farms and vineyards (staff can point you in the right direction), or try your hand at beekeeping. The wildly pretty village of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence is a five-minute drive or 20-minute walk away; it’s where Van Gogh admitted himself to the asylum at the Monastery Saint-Paul de Mausole, which you can still visit (several rooms have been dedicated to the tragic painter), but its history stretches further back still, with the ruins of the Roman town of Glanum. Arles, which attracted Picasso, Gauguin and – again – Van Gogh for its enchanting light, is a 30-minute drive away and boasts a very well-preserved Roman amphitheatre and a bountiful market, plus the serene green of the Camargue Nature Park. In summer, it’s host to photography festival Rencontres d'Arles. Avignon, to the north, holds a huge multidisciplinary arts festival in July. A local guide can be arranged to show you all of the region’s loveliest villages: Eygalières, Les Baux de Provence, Fontvieille, Paradou, Maussane, Mouriès… Or to take you up the Alpilles – from the top you may see a rare eagle or vulture take flight.
Local restaurants
Saint-Rémy-de Provence has many a lingering lunch spot or spot for brooding over a pastis. Edú is a favourite with locals for its simple presentations of superb produce; fill the table with small plates of aged black ham from Bigorre, Alpine Tomme and Pélardon cheeses from Cévennes, homemade foccacia topped with bottarga, a drizzle of oil and a squeeze of lemon, or share the catch of the day or ‘butcher’s piece’. Têtes d'Ail has its three cheeky garlic-clove mascots painted on the wall, but the food is more serious: dorade in sauce vierge, sea-bream fillet in Breton curry, salad with chèvre chaud and country ham. Mesiba picks and chooses flavours from across the Med, serving grilled pepper with za’atar and parmesan, koftas with whipped herby cream and cauliflower beignets in curry sauce; and Bistrot Découverte (19 Boulevard Victor Hugo) looks traditional, but has artful modern platings of time-old dishes: zucchini flowers stuffed with prawn in a seafood bisque, saffron-marinated fish. And La Table d'Estoublon is very haute, with a blonde-stone, vaulted-ceiling dining space and the likes of black-truffle pizza; tomatoes infused with verbena with pickled shallots; beef tartare and smoked-herring caviar with candied yolk and balsamic.
Local cafés
Take your sketchbook to Grand Café Riche (look for the stripy red awning) to scribble feverishly away over a coffee, flute of champagne or one of its cocktail creations: a Cointreau fizz, or maybe a mix of vodka, kiwi, caramel, lime, and ginger ale.
Every hotel featured is visited personally by members of our team, given the Smith seal of approval, and then anonymously reviewed. As soon as our reviewers have returned from this botanically minded former bastide by Saint-Rémy-de-Provence and unpacked their bunches of lavender and flasks of olive oil, a full account of their break will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside Domaine de Chalamon in the South of France…
The village of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence was left a huge cultural legacy when Van Gogh admitted himself to the asylum at Monastery Saint-Paul de Mausole. It’s here that he found beauty in the tangle of irises in its grounds and from the window of his room you’ll see the view that became The Starry Night. The village and its surrounding Alpilles scenery still lures those eager to capture it. But if you want one dizzying dose, then boutique stay Domaine de Chalamon (at the edge of Saint-Rémy) is leafier than any ‘green juice’ and more restorative, with six gardens, charmingly planted with neat topiary, boxwood hedges, plane, cypress and pine trees, produce for the kitchen, and manicured parterre, with acres of olive groves to complement. There’s an arbour to read under, a tennis court to play on, a terrace for wines from the Fontenille group’s vineyards and the free cake the chef brings out at 4pm, and picnicking spots worthy of a Renoir film. And it doesn’t rest on its laurels (pines, planes, etc) when it comes to the indoors, which have been spruced up by the owners into a pastel-hued haven that really feels like home. In broad strokes, Provence’s charms – greenery, serenity, refined rustic cuisine – have been effortlessly captured here.
