La Vague de Saint Paul – a concrete wave above the art village

At the end of the Chemin des Salettes, two kilometres from the ramparts of Saint-Paul de Vence, a low concrete building curls through olive and pine trees like something poured from a single wave. La Vague de Saint Paul takes its name from that silhouette: a run of rounded balconies and terraces raised at the end of the 1970s by André Minangoy, the architect behind Marina Baie des Anges on the coast at Villeneuve-Loubet and the Vista Palace above Monaco. For thirty years the building worked as the private convention centre of the American computer group Unisys, until a 2012 renovation turned it into a fifty-room hotel with spa, restaurant and a garden laid out by landscape designer Rodolphe Esmengiaud. The MICHELIN Guide has selected it in its hotel collection, filing its atmosphere as modern design and lively. For anyone heading up to the Fondation Maeght the next morning, it is as close as a room gets to sleeping inside a piece of period sculpture.

01The house

André Minangoy built only a handful of structures on the Côte d'Azur, but each shares the same vocabulary of poured concrete streamlined into continuous curves - the same language visible at Marina Baie des Anges and at the cliff-top Vista Palace in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin.

Commissioned at the end of the 1970s, the Saint-Paul building spent its first three decades as a seminar venue. From 1970 to 2000 the American company Unisys ran it as an international convention centre, filling it with training courses and client meetings, until it was sold in 2011. Its new owners found a property that had been stripped of its character, set inside a park reclaimed by nature, and spent time studying Minangoy's original drawings before rebuilding the hotel around its simplified structure so that garden and interior read as one project. Work began in the spring of 2012 under the Zurich architect Maurus Frei, with Phoenix Hotel Management overseeing the project and a Portuguese designer commissioned for the fixtures and furniture.

The hotel reopened in March 2013. Its fifty keys - 44 rooms, two Junior Suites and four Suites - are spread across three floors that follow the building's curve rather than a conventional corridor, each room decorated with its own colour and its own view over the garden.

02Rooms and suites

Classic Rooms occupy the ground floor in a yellow palette, 18 square metres overlooking the quiet garden, with two adapted for guests with reduced mobility. Superior Rooms step up to around 20-22 square metres with green interiors and deep private terraces at the garden's edge, useful for families thanks to several communicating pairs.

Insider tip

Closed in winter; restaurant dress code applies; pets welcome throughout.

Deluxe Rooms repeat the same scale in yellow or orange depending on whether they sit on the ground or roof floor, each with a balcony over the garden. Junior Suites, at 40 square metres, face the forest of La Sine with a living area built into the bedroom and a bathroom offering either a rain shower or a bath. The four Suites sit at the top of the range: 40 square metres split into a separate bedroom and sitting room, two private terraces and a bathroom with both a bath and an Italian shower, finished in warm orange tones.

03Where to eat

The hotel's restaurant, Au Jardin de la Vague, sits inside a contemporary room mixing art and colour, its terrace looking past the pool to a line of olive trees. Akhara Chay, a Maître Restaurateur and member of the Disciples d'Escoffier, leads the kitchen; he trained under Ghislaine Arabian, Alain Ducasse and Eric Provost before building a menu that threads flavours of Asia through produce sourced from local growers.

Breakfast runs from 7.30 to 10.30, lunch from 12.30 to 14.00 and dinner from 19.30 to 22.00, with the bar open until 11pm. Closing days shift through the year - Mondays all day in July and August, for instance, and Sunday evenings plus Monday and Tuesday either side of summer - and a jacket-and-tie dress code is required.

04Spa, pool and sport

The spa, run with L-Riviera Spa, holds a hammam, a sauna, a fitness room and a single treatment cabin, open daily from nine in the morning until eight at night. Outside, the pool sits at the centre of the park with free sun loungers; through July and August a pool bar serves cocktails, ice cream and light snacks between half past twelve and six, and the pool itself stays open from eight until seven. A tennis court and a pétanque run complete the grounds.

05The neighbourhood

Saint-Paul de Vence is a walled hill village dating back to the 14th century, one of Provence's most visited, drawing more than two million visitors a year. Marc Chagall made his home here, Henri Matisse lived down the road in Vence, and the hotel-restaurant La Colombe d'Or once counted Picasso, Sartre, Yves Montand and Jacques Prévert among its regulars.

La Vague has been a partner of the Fondation Maeght and a member of its Société des Amis since it opened in 2013. The foundation, which opened its doors in 1964, holds more than 13,000 works of modern and contemporary art and has staged over 140 exhibitions of international renown.

06Making the most of a stay

Between April and October an annual exhibition of established and emerging artists spreads across the bar, the restaurant and the garden, and every July the hotel partners with the Nuits du Sud festival in nearby Vence, bringing live music into the grounds.

The hotel keeps Riviera hours: open daily from May to September, Wednesday to Sunday in April and October, and closed over winter. Pets are welcome throughout, and booking is recommended for dinner.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.