10 of the best hotels in the South of France

Life isn’t perfect. That’s why we have places like Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc, where the world’s most glamorous people descend every summer to live on what feels like an impeccably styled film set. The last day of my most recent stay here – the one I had reserved to spend entirely by its swimming pool, cut into rocks overlooking a glittering blue Mediterranean Sea – turned out to be grey and overcast. By this time, I had already experienced the other attractions: the rose garden, the tennis courts, the private cabanas where I enjoyed a massage, the restaurants that manage to feel casually chic in the day and all dressed up at night, and the Manolo Valdés exhibition on its perfectly manicured lawns, where pine trees are being carefully planted to eventually replace the imposing ones standing now. This is a place where nostalgia is kept alive, where corridors are filled with photographs of its most famous guests from the past 150 years, where golden sunshine infuses everyone and everything with an air of romance, so that your time here feels lengthened and expanded, and etched in memory no matter how short your visit actually is. You will leave so well taken care of, so well-fed, so intoxicated by the heady, fragrant summer breeze, that even a cold final day on the French Riviera will not taint your mood. Instead, it seems like just a little twist in the plot, enough to make you believe that the rest of your life is pretty perfect after all. Divia Thani