Five-star hotels in La Croix-Valmer, by Gigaro and Cap Lardier

La Croix-Valmer hotels: the Cavalaire side of the peninsula

La Croix-Valmer lies at the foot of the Massif des Maures on the Bay of Cavalaire, halfway between Le Lavandou and Saint-Tropez. It is a young commune: until 6 April 1934 it was La Croix, a hamlet of Gassin, and it grew up around its wine estates and then tourism. The commune covers about 22 km², had 3,855 inhabitants in 2023, and has some 12 km of coastline.

La Croix-Valmer hotels trade the bustle of Saint-Tropez for space. Half of that coastline, about 6 km, lies within the protected Cap Lardier, and much of the land is still farmed for Provence wines.

The neighbours look the other way. Gassin, the hill village from which La Croix was separated, overlooks the Gulf of Saint-Tropez, and Ramatuelle holds Pampelonne and Cap Camarat; the RD 93, the 'route des Plages', links La Croix-Valmer with Ramatuelle and its beaches.

Château de Valmer and Lily of the Valley: two settings compared

The 2 listed hotels offer two distinct styles, and choosing between them is the main decision here; our guide to comparing five-star hotels before booking sets out a method.

Hôtel Château de Valmer is at 81 Boulevard de Gigaro, the road that also serves the Cap Lardier domain, and presents itself as set among vines, around a century-old palm grove. It has 41 rooms in the Atout France register and was classified five-star on 14 October 2022. Facilities include a Spa by Clarins, a heated pool and an outdoor pool, a fitness room and a pétanque court. Breakfast is a buffet on a terrace facing the palm grove; Le Jardin serves lunch with cocktails, pastis and local wines, and La Bastide is a Provençal bistro with Mediterranean dishes at dinner. There is a pool bar and an indoor bar whose terrace overlooks the park. The Deluxe room, with a king bed and a bathtub, has no balcony.

Hôtel Lily Of The Valley stands on the Colline Saint-Michel and describes its setting as the Domaine du Cap Lardier, a few minutes from Saint-Tropez. It has 53 registered rooms, was classified on 27 May 2024 and is open all year. Wellness is its core: a method built on slimming gastronomy, sport and personalised treatments, with Wellness Boosters, combining sport, manual treatments and recovery technology, available as an extra. Rooms, suites and pool suites range from 35 to 105 m², all with a large private terrace; Classic rooms look at the hills, Deluxe Sea rooms at the Mediterranean, and the 95 m² Gigaro Pool Suite over its own pool and garden. The 250 m² Villa W adds sea views. The restaurants use produce from the hotel's farm, mill and kitchen garden, and Brigantine serves Italian cooking on a terrace by the water, with elegant, casual dress requested.

Gigaro and the Cap Lardier protected coast

Gigaro beach marks the entrance to the Domaine du Cap Lardier, the first of the peninsula's three capes seen from the Bay of Cavalaire and the most wooded. The Conservatoire du littoral protects about 327 ha here, and with 6 km of shoreline kept free of building, against 2.5 km at Cap Taillat and 1.3 km at Cap Camarat, it is the longest protected stretch of the three; the Port-Cros National Park manages the site, which is also listed under the 1930 law on sites.

It came close to a different fate. From 1949 to 1960 the Gigaro sector was a campsite; a property company then planned a marina there, with 60 private lots and a 9,000 m² hamlet above a port. The site had been on the inventory of sites to protect since 1966, and a local conservation association asked the Conservatoire to step in and stop the scheme.

Nearly 500 plant species make up the cape's flora, 56 of them of heritage value, and until the 2017 fire this was one of the few coastal sites where holm, cork and downy oak grew alongside Aleppo, stone and maritime pine. Some 120 bird species have been recorded, most of them protected, and Hermann's tortoise, the European pond turtle and the ocellated lizard live on the cape. In January 2025 the National Park recorded an eagle owl on the domain for the first time.

The land has a farming past too: the Conservatoire notes cereals and olives towards Gigaro and vines at La Bastide Blanche. Gigaro itself has served as a film location many times.

Walking the coast path and snorkelling at Jovat

Two walks explore the shore. The Park's Circuit du Cap Lardier is a loop from the Gigaro reception point that combines forest and seashore: it climbs to the cape, turns towards Briande and returns along the shore past the beaches of Brouis and Jovat. The longer coastal trail starts at the Plage du Débarquement and follows the shore past Vergeron, Sylvabelle and Héraclée to the beaches of the Cap Lardier domain. A welcome kiosk at the Gigaro entrance is open daily in July and August, and the coast path carries on beyond the cape to L'Escalet in Ramatuelle.

For swimmers, the intercommunal marine observatory and the town hall laid out an underwater trail in 2017 around the Îlot du Crocodile off Jovat beach, about 20 minutes' walk from Gigaro. It is no deeper than 3 m, and the town hall suggests parking at the Saint-Michel car park near Gigaro and walking in through the protected area. Guided sessions, booked through the tourist office, were introduced in July 2018. Offshore, the tourist office highlights the posidonia meadows and the marine protected area.

August 1944: the Plage du Débarquement

During the Second World War, the beaches of La Croix-Valmer were a major site of the Allied landings in Provence, Operation Dragoon, in August 1944. The Alpha force, built around the US 3rd Infantry Division, came ashore at Cavalaire-sur-Mer and La Croix-Valmer, and the troops then pushed on towards Toulon and Marseille. The Plage du Débarquement keeps that history in its name, and Gigaro is also marked by it.

The tourist office's self-guided audio walks, available in French, English and German, include a route through the town's history from antiquity to the landing beach, a good way to read the coast before swimming off it.

Vineyards, a cru classé and the Sunday market

Wine made the modern town. According to the tourist office, the first estate was created at the end of the 19th century by industrialists from Lyon, and shops, a school and a church followed. Estates and rows of vines still cover the commune, and the tourist office says its producers all work towards sustainable or organic viticulture, with methods such as hand harvesting and ploughing by horse.

The Domaine de la Croix, described by the regional tourism board as the oldest estate in the commune, is one of the 18 estates that still use the Côtes de Provence cru classé mention from the 1955 classification, which originally covered 23. Three of the tourist office's four audio walks are built around wine: one crosses the vines of the Domaine de La Madrague to the coastal path, one explains how the vineyard of the Domaine de La Croix and the town grew together, and one, via the Château de Chausse, shows what the vine still means to the village.

The Provençal market sets up every Sunday morning of the year, with herbs, fruit, olives and local fish, and the tourist office counts it among the most renowned in the Gulf of Saint-Tropez. In high summer a night-time craft market adds an evening outing.

Arriving in La Croix-Valmer and reaching the beaches

La Croix-Valmer is about 50 km from Toulon-Hyères airport; Nice Côte d'Azur and the Golfe de Saint-Tropez airport at La Môle are the other air options. From the A8, the tourist office points drivers to the Le Cannet-des-Maures/Le Luc exit or the Le Muy/Sainte-Maxime exit. The nearest railway stations are Saint-Raphaël, Toulon and Les Arcs, and regional ZOU! coaches serve the town.

In July and August, drives towards Saint-Tropez cross the La Foux junction in Gassin, often saturated in summer. Around the commune, a shuttle serves Gigaro and the beaches in summer, with evening runs, and parking combines meters and blue zones.

Further west along the coast, Le Lavandou is the next listed resort, and our French Riviera hotels page covers the rest of the Var and Alpes-Maritimes coast.