Saint-Tropez
Handpicked villas, chalets and homes, booked direct with our team.
Search your Stay
About the Destination
Saint-Tropez sits on its own small peninsula on the Var coast of the French Riviera, facing north across a sheltered gulf rather than straight out to the open Mediterranean, which is part of why its light and its harbour feel softer than the busier resorts further east. It began as a fishing port, and the working heart of it survives in the Vieux Port, where the pastel houses of the old quarter still rise directly behind the fishing boats and the yachts moored bow-to along the quay.
The village became internationally famous in the 1950s, when the film set that gathered around Brigitte Bardot turned a quiet Provencal port into a byword for a certain kind of glamour, and it has kept that reputation without quite losing the town underneath it. Behind the port, the Place des Lices still holds its twice-weekly market and its games of petanque under the plane trees; above it, the seventeenth-century Citadelle, with its maritime museum, looks down over terracotta roofs; and the narrow streets of La Ponche, the old fishermen’s quarter, run down to small rocky coves. The long crescent of Pampelonne beach, just over the hill in neighbouring Ramatuelle, is where the famous beach clubs line the sand, some five kilometres of pale shore facing the open sea.
High season is unambiguously July and August, when the port fills, the beach clubs run at full tilt and the town is at its liveliest and most crowded. May, June and September are the connoisseur’s choice, with warm water, working markets and space to move, while the surrounding vineyards of the Cotes de Provence turn the shoulder seasons into good touring country for rose and coastal walks. The Sentier du Littoral, the coastal footpath, traces the whole peninsula past quiet rocky coves and headlands that most day-trippers never reach.
For those who want the peninsula on their own terms, with a pool, a garden and privacy away from the crowded quay, luxury villa rentals in Saint-Tropez spread across the vineyards and hillsides between the village and Pampelonne, many within a short drive of both the port and the beach.
