Baumanière – the farmhouse that won back its third star

Below the fortress village of Les Baux-de-Provence, in a stony ravine known as the Val d'Enfer – Hell's Valley – Raymond Thuilier bought a derelict farmhouse in 1943 and had opened its first rooms within two years. It was in that wild, secluded landscape that Thuilier's dream of an exceptional hotel took shape. The restaurant he built, L'Oustau de Baumanière, won its first Michelin star in 1949, a second in 1952 and a third in 1954, a run it kept until 1990. Three decades later, to mark its 75th anniversary in 2020, chef Glenn Viel and his team regained the third Michelin star, making Viel, at 39, the youngest French chef to hold three stars. In April 2024 the MICHELIN Guide also awarded the hotel itself Three Keys. Eighty years on, the Charial family – Thuilier's descendants – still run the 53-room domain among olive groves and three swimming pools.

01The house

Georges Pompidou, then deputy commissioner for tourism, officially inaugurated L'Oustau de Baumanière, and within a few years the farmhouse-turned-inn had become a stopping point for a different kind of guest. In 1959 Jean Cocteau moved in for three months while filming Le Testament d'Orphée in the old stone quarries nearby, and Picasso came to visit him there. Queen Elizabeth II stayed two nights at L'Oustau de Baumanière during her 1972 state visit to France, and Deng Xiaoping, the Shah of Iran and Saddam Hussein all passed through between 1974 and 1975. The house joined what would become Relais & Châteaux, and in 1984 it marked thirty consecutive years with three Michelin stars – a run that ended when Thuilier handed the kitchen to his grandson Jean-André Charial in 1990 and the restaurant was demoted to two stars.

Charial spent the next three decades rebuilding the house's reputation, hiring Glenn Viel in 2015 to run the kitchen the same year L'Oustau de Baumanière, La Cabro d'Or and the hotel were merged into a single brand, Baumanière, marking its 70-year history. Jean-André and Geneviève Charial still own and run the domain today; she now oversees its interior decoration with her daughter-in-law, Philippine Lemaire.

02Rooms and suites

The 53 rooms and suites are spread across five separate houses rather than one block: L'Oustau, La Maison de Famille, Le Manoir, Carita or Flora, each decorated differently and looking either over the Baux valley or the gardens. Geneviève Charial has been redecorating rooms with Philippine Lemaire, mixing contemporary furniture with antiques, half-tone greens and terracotta. The largest room in the estate sits in the eighteenth-century Manoir, with exposed beams and views onto both the garden and the rock of Les Baux-de-Provence. The newest addition is the Family House, once the home where Thuilier himself settled in 1958 – six rooms that can be booked individually or taken over entirely as a private villa for up to twelve guests, with its own kitchen and lounge.

Insider tip

Closed annually in late January; L'Oustau de Baumanière closes longer, until early March. Book rooms and tables separately.

03Where to eat

L'Oustau de Baumanière is the three-Michelin-starred table of this five-star Relais & Châteaux property, and since 2015 the kitchen has belonged to Glenn Viel, who had already won a second star at the Kilimanjaro in Courchevel before Charial brought him south. Charial, who had been at the helm of the property for fifty years, had his eyes set on attaining three stars again and believed Viel was the chef to do it; Viel delivered in 2020, taking the restaurant's cellar — now holding more than 50,000 bottles — back into the firmament of French gastronomy, along with the green star recognising sustainable gastronomy. Much of what reaches the plate comes from Baumanière's own organic kitchen garden, farmed since 1970.

A nine-hundred-metre walk away, La Cabro d'Or is the more informal of Baumanière's two tables, run since 2001 by chef Michel Hulin, who draws on the same gardens and on local producers; the restaurant earned the Green Food sustainability label in 2023. Since 2022 a small chocolate factory beside L'Oustau has sold pastry chef Brandon Dehan's pralines and single-origin bars, including a signature praline shaped like a cicada and flavoured with herbs from the kitchen garden.

04Spa and pools

Baumanière's spa occupies part of the old Family House and works with Sisley alongside the Provençal, olive-based line Une Olive en Provence. Its treatment cabins open onto the garden, and a sensory pool uses warmed, massaging jets and chromotherapy for what the house calls an aquatic journey, alongside a hammam and a free-access gym. Three outdoor pools are scattered around the domain – the Domaine has 3 outdoor swimming pools, a tennis court, a children's playground and a Sisley Spa, with lunch served poolside at the Manoir on hot days.

05The neighbourhood

Les Baux-de-Provence, perched on its limestone spur above the hotel, is one of France's most visited fortified villages; its ruined castle and steep lanes are a short drive from reception, and the illuminated art shows at the nearby Carrières de Lumières fill the old bauxite quarries where Cocteau once filmed. Jean-André Charial makes his own wine, L'Affectif, from organically farmed vines at Domaine de Lauzières in the Alpilles, and the valley's olive oil carries its own PDO, used throughout both of Baumanière's kitchens. Avignon is around half an hour by car, Arles closer still.

06Making the most of a stay

By car the house sits below the village on the D27, roughly thirty minutes from Avignon.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.