A whole village turned, gently, into a hotel.
There are hotels that occupy a building, and then there is Crillon le Brave, which occupies a village. Two dozen houses at the top of a hill in the Vaucluse, joined by stepped lanes and walled gardens, have been knitted together over thirty years into one of the most quietly assured addresses in Provence. You do not check in so much as move in.
The rooms are what the French call sobre in the best sense — lime-washed walls, antique linen, a few good pieces and nothing that shouts. The point is not the room. The point is the terrace beyond it, and the view across the plain to Mont Ventoux, which turns rose at six and indigo by nine.
The table
Dinner is taken in the old bistro or, in summer, on the terrace under the planes. The kitchen keeps it local and unfussy: vegetables from the kitchen garden, lamb from the Alpilles, a wine list that finally does the southern Rône justice. Breakfast — figs, honey, warm fougasse — is reason enough to stay a second night. Read our full Provence table guide.
Getting there
Crillon-le-Brave is forty minutes from Avignon TGV and a world away from anywhere. Come by car; the back roads through Bedoin and the vineyards are half the pleasure. See also our weekend in the Luberon.
“The kind of place that ruins you, gently, for ordinary hotels. Come for two nights; you will wish you had booked three.”
