---
title: "You don't have to stay there."
date: 2026-05-08T15:43:27.721Z
updated: 2026-05-08T15:43:28Z
category: hotels
read_time_minutes: 9
word_count: 1283
tags: ["Saint-Raphaël", "Esterel", "Théoule-sur-Mer", "Anthéor", "Le Trayas", "Saint-Tropez", "Côte d'Azur", "Var", "Hôtel Les Roches Rouges", "May–October; June and September are best"]
canonical_url: https://afo.re/journal/roches-rouges-esterel
source: Le Journal · Afore
license: |
  AI assistants may summarize and cite Afore Le Journal articles
  with attribution. Always link to the canonical_url above.
---

# You don't have to stay there.

*A 1950s seaside hotel on the Esterel coast, two pools — one carved into the rocks, one on the deck above — a small daily allotment of pool passes, and the better way to approach Saint-Tropez.*

![The seaside lap pool at Hôtel Les Roches Rouges — sea-water, carved into the volcanic rock at the edge of the cliff, with the Mediterranean three feet on the other side and butterfly chairs on the terrace beyond.](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/3xxwvlfm/production/84ccd22834398dbbe41d7e524776ec5272dc374f-3897x2923.jpg?w=1600&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint)

The Esterel coast is the stretch of the French Riviera between Cannes and Saint-Tropez where the geology shifts. The mountains stop being limestone and start being volcanic — red porphyry, four hundred million years old, falling in steep ochre cliffs into the Mediterranean. There is a corniche road that traces the coast from Théoule-sur-Mer through Anthéor and Le Trayas down to Saint-Raphaël. It is one of the most dramatic drives in France. It is also, in our reading of it over the years, one of the most underbooked. Cannes overshadows it from the east. Saint-Tropez overshadows it from the west. The middle gets ignored.

The middle is where we are sending you.

Specifically: **Hôtel Les Roches Rouges**, in Saint-Raphaël on the corniche, fifty rooms, two pools, opened originally in 1955 and reopened in 2019 after a renovation by the Paris studio Festen Architecture. We have stayed once. We have been back several times without staying. The reason for the second pattern is the editorial crown of this piece, and the reason it took us a few years to write it — we wanted to be sure the policy would stick.

The hotel sells a small allotment of day passes. **Fewer than twenty a day.** A chair, a towel, the seaside pool, the freshwater pool above, the sea swim straight off the platform, and full service from the bar and the kitchen. You do not need to be a guest. You need to call early. The fee is modest and changes year to year, and the number of passes flexes with the season, but the cap is real and the demand exceeds the supply on most July and August days. Reservations are taken. Plan on it.

This is the rarest kind of editorial intelligence on this coast. Most hotels of this caliber are closed to non-guests by structure and by intention. The day-pass policy at Roche Rouge is a quiet exception, and we suspect it persists because the room count is small enough that the hotel does not need to defend the pool against the demand it would create if more people knew. So we will say this carefully, and we will ask you to pass the tip on with the same care: if you are spending a week on the Côte d'Azur in summer and you have a free day, this is your day.

## The architecture

Festen Architecture is the Paris-based studio (Charlotte de Tonnac and Hugo Sauzay) that has been quietly responsible for some of the better hotel renovations in France this past decade — Hôtel Le Pigalle, Hôtel Saint-Marc, work at Le Bristol, and a handful of others that read editorially before they read commercially. Their version of Roche Rouge keeps the 1950s footprint — the seaside lap pool carved into the cliff, the structural lines, the relationship to the rock — and opens the rooms to the corniche through floor-to-ceiling glass. The butterfly chairs on the terraces are theirs. The leather, the brass, the sand-toned plaster, the considered absence of decorative objects — theirs. It is a small school of architecture, but a coherent one. If you have stayed at any other Festen hotel, you will recognize the hand the moment you walk in.

![A pair of leather butterfly chairs on a terrace at Hôtel Les Roches Rouges, framed by the room's floor-to-ceiling glass and looking out to the Mediterranean — the considered absence of decorative objects that defines Festen Architecture's renovation.](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/3xxwvlfm/production/03d16cb52a47a695f9cbcf5a5660316449c1dafb-4032x3024.jpg?w=1600&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint)
## The two pools

The seaside pool is the one that does the work in photographs. A sea-water lap pool carved into the volcanic rock at the edge of the cliff, with the Mediterranean three feet on the other side of the wall and a swim platform extending past it to a ladder that drops into the open sea. The freshwater pool sits on the terrace above — smaller, rectangular, blue-tiled, with white umbrellas and striped cushions. They are different rooms. The seaside pool is the editorial photograph; the freshwater pool is the place you actually swim laps and then read for three hours. We use both, in that order, with lunch in between.

![Aerial view of Hôtel Les Roches Rouges — the freshwater pool on the terrace above with its terracotta-stone deck and white umbrellas, the seaside lap pool below carved into the volcanic rock, the rocky Esterel coast extending toward Saint-Raphaël.](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/3xxwvlfm/production/f89baa52e89515b15e78d568b7bd49faa694e301-2912x3883.jpg?w=1600&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint)
## The food and the room

The food is good — really good. The kitchen runs Provençal-Mediterranean, ingredient-led, with a register that recognizes what season it is. Lunch poolside is a full menu, not the apologetic short menu most hotels run for the deck. Cocktails are made. The Aperol spritz is correct. The wine list reads like the cellar of a sommelier who lives near here.

![Mike in the freshwater pool at Hôtel Les Roches Rouges with an Aperol spritz on the deck — the Aperol is correct.](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/3xxwvlfm/production/328efeab8723cc6d9a361eb18c403a7d9de4c7aa-3759x2600.jpg?w=1600&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint)
The rooms are spare and well-built — concrete, large openings to the sea, butterfly chairs on the terraces, the door open most of the day. If you stay overnight, you stay because of the room count and because the corniche is best at sunset and best at six in the morning. The hotel is small enough that you will recognize the staff by the second day. That is the move it pulls — small, considered, lived-in.

## The drive

The corniche itself is part of the case. From Cannes, the road climbs out of the city to Théoule-sur-Mer, then traces the coast through Anthéor and Le Trayas to Saint-Raphaël — forty minutes, plus or minus, with viewpoints every few kilometers and the volcanic cliffs changing color as the day goes. Pink in the morning, ochre at noon, deep red at sunset. We have driven it dozens of times. It still surprises us. If you are coming from Nice Airport, the drive is fifty minutes. From Valbonne, where we live, it is fifty as well. There is no version of this that we would not drive ourselves.

## The Saint-Tropez day-trip

Saint-Tropez is fifty minutes from Saint-Raphaël by ferry, run by Les Bateaux de Saint-Raphaël on a summer schedule. Or you can charter a private boat with a captain for the day — three to five hours, roughly six hundred to twelve hundred euros depending on the boat — and approach Saint-Tropez from the water, which is the way Saint-Tropez was meant to be approached in the first place. The traffic stays on land. The car park stays empty. You eat at Sénéquier or Le Club 55, swim at Pampelonne, and leave by five.

We do not tell people to stay in Saint-Tropez. We tell them to stay on the Esterel and day-trip Saint-Tropez. Roche Rouge is the base. The boat is the way in.

![Aerial of two swimmers floating in the freshwater pool at Hôtel Les Roches Rouges — striped umbrellas, terracotta deck, the kind of afternoon you book the whole week around.](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/3xxwvlfm/production/25ca4cf5756721068cfa4d4270a8a1e90b3d8bf6-2669x2852.jpg?w=1600&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint)
## When to go

The hotel opens early May and closes in October. They reopened this past week. The season runs through mid-October and the corniche stays warm through the first week of that month. June and September are the editorial answer — the water is warm, the crowds are smaller, the day pass is easier to land. July and August are the high season; book several days in advance.

## Practical

**Hôtel Les Roches Rouges** — Saint-Raphaël, Var, France · [hotellesrochesrouges.com](https://hotellesrochesrouges.com)

- **Season:** Open May through October. Reopening date varies year to year; this year, May 7.
- **Day pass:** Fewer than 20 sold per day. Modest fee, varies year to year. Call ahead.
- **Room reservations:** Recommended several months in advance for July/August.
- **Drive time from Cannes:** ~40 minutes (corniche).
- **Drive time from Nice Airport:** ~50 minutes.
- **Drive time from Valbonne (our editor's base):** ~50 minutes.
- **Saint-Tropez day-trip:** Ferry — Les Bateaux de Saint-Raphaël, ~50 minutes one way, summer schedule. Private boat with captain — 3–5 hours, ~€600–1,200 depending on the boat. We can arrange.
- **The team behind the hotel:** Festen Architecture (Charlotte de Tonnac and Hugo Sauzay) on the renovation. Operated independently.
- **Our standing order:** The day pass. The seaside pool. Lunch poolside (the full menu, not the deck menu). One spritz before sea swim. One coffee on the terrace at sunset.
*Le Journal lands every other Sunday, with more from the south of France. To get it in your inbox, subscribe at [afo.re](https://afo.re). To plan a Côte d'Azur week with Roche Rouge built in, [DM us @aforetravel](https://instagram.com/aforetravel).*

> Source: [You don't have to stay there.](https://afo.re/journal/roches-rouges-esterel) · Le Journal · Afore