Five-star hotels in Ramatuelle, above Pampelonne Bay

Ramatuelle hotels: a commune made of coastline

Ramatuelle covers about 36 km² of the Saint-Tropez peninsula, cut off from the rest of its canton by an arc of wooded hills. Its shoreline runs for more than 16 km: the long bay of Pampelonne, smaller beaches such as Bonne Terrasse, below Cap Camarat, and L'Escalet, and the two headlands of Cap Camarat and Cap Taillat, the second shared with La Croix-Valmer. Only 1,888 people lived here in 2023.

For anyone comparing Ramatuelle hotels, the useful distinction is between three settings: the hill village at about 130 m, the plain of vines behind the beach, and the wilder headlands of Camarat and Taillat. The village and the capes are quieter; the lanes down to Pampelonne are not, in high summer.

The neighbouring communes face other waters. Gassin, over the ridge, looks north across the Gulf of Saint-Tropez from its hilltop, while La Croix-Valmer, beyond Cap Taillat, opens onto the Bay of Cavalaire.

Hôtel Villa Marie, above Pampelonne Bay

Hôtel Villa Marie stands at 1100 Chemin de Val de Rian and trades as Villa Marie Saint-Tropez, a reminder that the Saint-Tropez name travels well beyond the town limits. It has 45 rooms in the Atout France register and was classified five-star on 17 June 2022; our guide to what makes a hotel five-star in France explains what that classification measures.

The suites combine a bedroom and a lounge area with a balcony facing Pampelonne Bay and the Mediterranean. Families can take the Junior Family Suite, with a bedroom for two and a small adjoining room for two children, sleeping up to four.

Dining centres on the Dolce Vita restaurant, which serves Mediterranean cooking with wide sea views and suits long lunches in the shade of the pines. The Pure Altitude Spa is set in the gardens; its treatments pair alpine botanicals with techniques such as cryotherapy, drainage, gua sha and kobido. The fitness room is equipped with WaterRower machines, a non-motorised Sprintbok treadmill, a Nohrd bike and a punching bag, alongside a space for gentler exercise.

La Réserve Ramatuelle, a Palace on a private estate

La Réserve Ramatuelle stands on Chemin de la Quessine, on a private estate in the garrigue above a bay a few minutes from Saint-Tropez. The Atout France register lists 40 rooms, classified five-star on 24 September 2024, and the hotel is one of the Palaces on the official list updated on 2 June 2026, which our guide to Palace hotels in France sets out in full. Its sea-facing villas pair Tropezian architecture with contemporary interiors.

At La Voile, chef Eric Canino's Mediterranean cooking, built on fish, olive oil and herbs from Provence, holds two MICHELIN stars (as of 2026), and the MICHELIN Guide gives the hotel three MICHELIN Keys. Its beach address on Pampelonne, La Réserve à La Plage, was reinvented by Michel Reybier and Philippe Starck. The 1,000 m² Spa Nescens draws on the medical expertise of the Swiss brand Nescens and keeps a 12-metre heated indoor pool. Out of season the restaurants close (La Voile, La Brasserie and La Muña reopen in May 2027, as of October 2026), while guests staying through the quieter months keep access to the spa, its indoor pool and the fitness centre.

Pampelonne beach: from landing beach to regulated shore

Pampelonne beach is 4.5 km of sand, about 27 ha in all. On 15 August 1944 it was one of the beaches of the Allied landings in Provence; the US Army dug a track off the sand, and the land behind was cleared for a military base with an airstrip. Clearing the mines afterwards took years.

Its fame came in the following decades. The tourist office traces the legend to three addresses: Tahiti Plage, set up in 1946 with bamboo décor from a 1935 film set; Club 55, which the tourist office dates to 1955 and which fed the crew of Et Dieu… créa la femme with Brigitte Bardot; and L'Epi Plage, opened in 1960. Roger Vadim's film was released in 1956, and Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez followed in 1964.

The beach businesses work under sub-concessions from the commune, which holds a beach concession from the State. The first was granted on 18 September 1974 for 15 years and renewed on 18 August 1992. In 2002 the Conseil d'État recognised the beach as a remarkable natural area under the 1986 coastal law, and in 2008 the commune began a development plan that the State approved by decree on 15 December 2015.

The plan cut the lots for bathing, bar and restaurant businesses from 27 to 23. Eight establishments were to move back onto public land in reversible buildings of wood and raw earth, and nine to the foot of the dune in wooden structures taken down out of season. Sunbeds and parasols were to fall from about 4,400 to 3,500, vehicles were to be banned from the sand and the dune restored. A prefectoral order of 7 April 2017 granted the commune a new concession for twelve years from 1 January 2019, and the council awarded the beach lots on 16 July 2018; the town hall now describes demountable beach buildings that leave the sand free in winter.

The spiral village: Place de l'Ormeau and the Porte Sarrasine

Ramatuelle village climbs the flank of the Paillas hill at about 130 m and is laid out in a spiral, like a snail shell, looking over Pampelonne Bay and the farmland. During the Wars of Religion the Saint-Tropez militia razed it in 1592, and the village was rebuilt in 1620; only parts of the ramparts and the church bell tower, a former watch tower, are older.

The gate known as the Porte Sarrasine still shows the groove of its portcullis, which French also calls a 'sarrasine', and hinges fitted in 1792. The church of Notre-Dame, built against the rampart, was completed with a main door dated 1620, framed in green serpentine quarried at Cavalaire.

The Place de l'Ormeau keeps its old name and holds the Provençal market on Thursday and Sunday mornings all year. In the cemetery, the actor Gérard Philipe (1922–1959) lies under a plain marble plaque. The Festival de Ramatuelle, a festival of theatre, comedy and popular music founded in 1985 by Jacqueline Franjou and Jean-Claude Brialy in his memory, is held in the open-air Théâtre de Verdure, usually in the first half of August.

Cap Camarat, Cap Taillat and the coastal path

Beyond Pampelonne the coast turns to rock and cork oak. The Camarat land was sold to the Conservatoire du littoral in 1977, after the commune had turned down a series of housing schemes, and its woodland is mostly cork oak over a dense shrub layer; the commune and the regional conservation body CEN PACA manage the Conservatoire's Taillat and Camarat site. The Camarat lighthouse is the second in France, after Vallauris, for the height of its light, about 130 m above the sea, and its range is 26 nautical miles, about 48 km; it has been automated since 1977 and is controlled remotely from the lighthouse on Porquerolles.

Cap Taillat, set between Cap Lardier and Cap Camarat, differs from both because of its sandy isthmus. In 1970 a company that had bought 27 ha there planned a holiday village of 400 bungalows with a port; at the request of a former mayor, the Conservatoire bought the land from 1987. A customs house built under Napoleon I, since restored, stands at its foot, and a late-Neolithic dolmen survives on the Briande side.

From the lighthouse, the tourist office gives walking times of about 50 minutes to Pampelonne, 2 hours 20 minutes to L'Escalet and 3 hours to Cap Taillat, whose summit gives a 360-degree view. L'Escalet is a beach of about 350 m between the two capes, where a mask and snorkel are the way to explore. In all, the coastal path runs for about 15 km through the commune.

From 21 June to 30 September, access to the Var's forest massifs, the capes included, depends on the daily fire-danger level. The reason is plain on Cap Taillat, much of which burned in a major fire in late July 2017.

The Paillas mills and the vineyard plain

Above the village, about 2 km along the road to Gassin, five windmills were built between the 16th and 19th centuries. The 19th-century Moulin de Paillas was restored in 2002 with a working wooden mechanism and a millstone ready to grind wheat, and from its site the view runs along the whole coast from Cavalaire to Saint-Tropez.

Vines cover about 750 ha, some 20% of the commune, and produce around 40,000 hl of wine a year. Vine growing here goes back to antiquity; the vineyard was partly destroyed during the Second World War, notably by the 1944 landing, and had to be rebuilt afterwards. Today it is shared between a cooperative winery and several estates, and the tourist office suggests cellar visits and tastings as a rainy-day outing.

Getting to Ramatuelle and around it in high summer

Ramatuelle has no railway station; the nearest TGV stations are Les Arcs-Draguignan and Saint-Raphaël. The nearest airports are Toulon-Hyères, Nice Côte d'Azur and the Golfe de Saint-Tropez airport at La Môle, which mainly serves business aviation. Whichever you choose, the last part of the journey is by road down the peninsula.

From the A8, the nearest exit is 36 at Le Muy. Drivers then follow the gulf to the La Foux roundabout in Gassin, the gateway to the peninsula, which is frequently saturated in summer.

Once here, the aim is to leave the car. In summer (15 June to 22 September in 2026, according to the tourist office), a free shuttle runs every 20 minutes between the village, L'Escalet and the southern end of Pampelonne, and the tourist office lists taxi stands on the Place de l'Ormeau, the Boulevard Patch and the Route de l'Epi. Pampelonne has six access roads: the Route de Bonne Terrasse, Chemin de Garonne, Boulevard Patch, Chemin des Tamaris, Chemin des Moulins and Route de Tahiti. For a quieter beach, the Côte d'Azur France tourism board suggests arriving before 10 a.m. or after 7 p.m. Our French Riviera hotels page covers the rest of the coast.