Beyond Saint-Tropez—Here’s Why You Should Explore This Corner of the French Riviera This Summer
This summer, head to the underrated Var coastline, where a buzzing cultural scene and a sprawling new island hotel are drawing a new wave of visitors.
With the classic French Riviera heartland growing increasingly more crowded and overpriced, it's worth looking further west to the Var coast—past Saint-Tropez, the Var’s perennial poster child, which has since succumbed to the same afflictions—to a stretch of coast where Riviera charm remains blithely intact. Though to understand the Var coast, you must first understand what it is not.
The main hub of the French Riviera, as most people conceive of it, is essentially a narrow strip of the Alpes-Maritimes that includes popular towns like Nice, Cannes and Antibes. It’s compact, gleaming, and easily digested, with Nice’s airport, France’s third busiest, funneling in travelers from all over the world, while the Riviera railway, one of Europe’s great scenic lines, stitches the coast together stop by stop. It is, in short, a machine built for tourism. The Var coast, by contrast, has no such infrastructure. Toulon has an airport, but with fewer international routes and that reliable railway that runs further east, abandons the coastline here, retreating inland.
Much of the Var also remains indifferent to the kind of glitz and glamour the east has perfected. It has no Monaco, a sovereign city-state conjured from pure ambition, where the Grand Prix tears through the streets. It has no Cannes Film Festival, with its fortnight of red carpet theater. Generally, fewer palace hotels. Fewer Michelin stars. Fewer superyachts (outside Saint-Tropez’s summer circus, anyway).
But what the Var does have, in almost embarrassing abundance, is nature—from the Port-Cros National Park, the rust-red ridges of the Estérel, the silence of the Maures massif, the Îles d'Or, shimmering offshore in a sea of improbable blue, and vineyards spilling down to the coast, producing some of France’s most underrated wine. Most of these are protected landscapes, and the tourism figures reflect that restraint. Here, you can soak in Riviera life without the performance, finding a quieter register that feels, somehow, more indulgent.
A beach along the Massif de l’Esterel.
From a new wave of design-forward hotels, to no-frills seaside villages, wild nature, scenic islands and an art and culture scene that is having a moment, the Var is on the cusp of a moment of its own. It also happens to enjoy slightly warmer and sunnier weather than its eastern neighbors year-round, a function of its more sheltered position and some benevolent local microclimates. A small but persuasive bonus.
Pull up a chair at a port-side terrace in Bandol and order a glass while you wait for the ferry to cross—the harbor town’s small appellation has a disproportionately serious reputation, its Mourvèdre-driven reds unusually structured and age-worthy for the region. Seven minutes by private boat for hotel guests, or public ferry for daytime visitors, lies Zannier Île de Bendor, one of the most anticipated hotel openings in the South of France this summer, which arrived this month after five years of transformation.
The backstory alone has real intrigue: a private, car-free island steeped in the mythology of French pastis magnate, Paul Ricard, who bought it in the 1950s and turned it into a Mediterranean idyll of art, creativity and sun-drenched conviviality. That spirit has been carefully preserved and quietly elevated in its new chapter. Laid out village-style across the 17-acre island, the 93-room hotel breaks into three clusters, each with its own character—Delos is the one to book and settle into. Completing the picture: several restaurants and bars, a wellness and fitness center with treatments and daily group classes, artisan ateliers, two pools, a sandy beach, and cliffside swimming straight into the open sea. Even if you’re not staying, a day trip to the island along your Var coast itinerary is a worthy stop.
Back on the mainland, it’s also worth dropping into Sanary-sur-Mer for a half-day on your drive east—ideally on a Wednesday, when the weekly market transforms the harbor boulevard: stalls piled with fresh fish from the morning catch, local olives and tapenade, 30 varieties of goat’s cheese, charcuterie, and sun-blessed produce straight from nearby farms. The town has a unique, historical backstory too; it’s the birthplace of modern scuba diving, where Jacques Cousteau lived, tested the first aqualung in the waters just offshore, and whose Villa Baobab you pass on a gentle coastal walk along the Chemin de la Colline. For the full story, stop into the Musée Frédéric Dumas at the old port, a charmingly lo-fi museum with original diving equipment on display.
Continue east to Hyères, one of the Var’s most compelling destinations and one of the oldest towns on the Riviera. Its exceptional microclimate—mild enough to make it one of the largest palm producers in Europe, those palms still lining its grand boulevards today—also made it a magnet for artists and aristocrats throughout the 19th century, luring writers, artists and European royalty in equal measure. The same well-heeled migration left behind an extraordinary collection of Belle Époque and Italianate villas scattered across the hillsides that give Hyères an architectural richness you won’t find anywhere else on this coast.
Today, the draws are many and varied: a medieval hilltop village, extraordinary botanical gardens, some of the most unspoiled coastline on the Riviera, and the Villa Noailles, the legendary modernist arts center where Man Ray and the Dadaists once gathered, and which continues to draw a discerning cultural crowd with its prestigious annual fashion and photography festival.
The Giens Peninsula stretches below the old town into the Mediterranean within the Port-Cros National Park and is one of the most rewarding places to spend a day on the entire Var coast. The Sentier du Littoral coastal path winds along its edges, threading between rocky coves and pine-fringed cliffs with the Îles d'Or visible on the horizon. While you’re here, seek out Château Noir, a late 18th-century Provençal bastide surrounded by a remarkable botanical garden that diplomat Denys Gauer spent nearly three decades cultivating after acquiring the property in 1995, only opening it to visitors in 2023. It remains one of the peninsula’s best-kept secrets and is open Sundays or by appointment.
Stay at the newly reimagined Hôtel Le Provençal on the peninsula, a third-generation family hotel dating to the early 1950s, its legendary seawater pool carved into the clifftop in the manner of a Slim Aarons photograph. Paris-based designer Rodolphe Parente refreshed it in collaboration with third-generation owners Benjamin and Damien Piffet. The main building holds 41 rooms alongside a bistro and fine dining restaurant, while a winding path through the park leads to a seaside restaurant and a barbecue terrace. Tucked deeper into the grounds, private residences offer a more secluded retreat.
After hiking along the Sentier du Littoral, take the ferry from Port de la Tour Fondue and spend a couple of days in Porquerolles, the most beautiful of the Iles d’Or. After a 15-minute crossing, check into Le Porquerollais, a family-run six-room restaurant-with-rooms on the upper edge of Place d'Armes, the village square shaded by eucalyptus. Inès, the owner, runs the place more like a large family home than a hotel, and her team has a way of folding you in within minutes, making you feel more like family than a guest checking in. Her ex-husband is a local fisherman who spends his days fishing by net, pulling lobster, sea bream and red mullet exclusively from the waters around the Îles d'Or, all of which ends up on your plate that evening at the restaurant, equally beloved by locals and visitors. By my second night, I was closing the place down with the staff and a few of the fishermen over nightcaps—an intimacy you don't get at most hotels, and one that tells you most of what you need to know about how the island works.
Days on Porquerolles fill themselves easily, best explored by bike, which you can rent at one of the many shops in town. Dirt paths thread inland through what is, since 1971, three-quarters of the island under national park protection: stands of pine and eucalyptus, the vineyards of Domaine de l’Île and La Courtade (the island’s two estates, both producing Côtes de Provence rosés, whites, and reds), and the conservatory orchards run by the Conservatoire Botanique National Méditerranéen—some 700 varieties of Mediterranean fruit, including 150-plus kinds of olive, 300 of fig, more than 200 Provençal peaches, and dozens of mulberries, apricots, and almonds, all shaded under canopies of fig, olive, and oleander. The same paths drop down to a coast that splits into two distinct personalities: dramatic clifftops and hidden rocky coves to the south, long stretches of pale sand and clear water to the north.
Visit Fondation Carmignac, a contemporary art foundation set within a sprawling sculpture garden inside the national park, just a ten-minute walk from the port. What was once an old Provençal farmhouse has been hollowed out into a series of cavernous underground galleries. The collection, assembled by financier Édouard Carmignac since 2000 and spanning Warhol, Basquiat, Richter and beyond, is shown alongside a rotating temporary exhibition each season. The foundation is located on Domaine de la Courtade, one of Porquerolles’ two working wineries, worth lingering for a tasting and lunch at Poisson Ivre.
