No commission — you deal directly with the owners
Elsewhere, and off-season
A few regions we know well, and the addresses their owners let directly there.
A mountain set in the sea: more than one hundred and twenty summits rise above two thousand metres, and no point on the island is more than forty kilometres from the shore. Clear coves, villages clinging to granite, and an interior that is always underestimated. Corsica has to be earned, and that is what makes it worth it.
4 addresses
A coastline stretched between the red rock of the Esterel and the white cliffs of the calanques, where Belle Époque villas stand alongside the hilltop villages of the hinterland. The Côte d’Azur holds together two landscapes that turn their backs on each other: a built-up strip along the sea, and hills that begin as soon as the road pulls away from the shore.
no address
A limestone range stretched over sixty kilometres between the Rhône and the Durance, cut through the middle by a single gap, with two slopes that have little in common. Hilltop villages, dry-stone huts and markets that set the rhythm of the week: the Luberon is best seen slowly, one valley at a time.
4 addresses
Some thirty kilometres of coast between the Adour and the Bidassoa, and behind them, barely further on, the first foothills of the Pyrenees. Everything else fits in between: villages with red half-timbering, a pelota wall on every square, a language with no known relative, and a swell that gave rise to European surfing.
4 addresses
A triangular lagoon of some one hundred and fifty square kilometres, open to the Atlantic through a narrow mouth and closed to the east by pine forest. It empties and fills twice a day, and everything is arranged around that: the oyster huts, the villas under the pines, and the Pilat dune advancing towards the forest.
4 addresses
A short range of white limestone set among the olive groves between Avignon and Arles, too low to be called a mountain and too steep to pass for a plain. The Alpilles are held together by stone villages, farmhouses sheltered from the wind behind rows of cypress, and quarries that supplied the region's stone long before tourism arrived.
no address
A valley cut by the Dordogne River between limestone cliffs, where castles face each other from their promontories and whole villages shelter beneath a single rock overhang. The Périgord changes stone and colour from north to south, from the black of its oak forests to the white of its limestone hills.
no address
White villages clinging to the slopes of the sierra, courtyards with a fountain behind closed façades, and a Moorish heritage that surfaces everywhere, from the horseshoe arch to the walled garden. Andalusia holds together a mild coast, an endless plain of olive trees, and peaks that carry snow for part of the year.
no address
Four islands that have little in common: a mountainous, cove-lined Mallorca, a flat and pastoral Menorca, a pine-covered, cove-studded Ibiza, and a Formentera reduced to its dunes and a lagoon. The Balearics are chosen island by island, more than visited all at once.
no address
Hills worked for centuries, avenues of cypress, and towns that still hold their walls. Tuscany is as much looked at as visited — a landscape before it is a list of places.
no address
A volcanic island at the crossroads of several seas, where Greek, Arab, Norman and Spanish influence still reads on the façades. Sicily changes landscape several times a day, and never tells the same story twice.
no address
An island of granite and scrubland, split in two by its own relief: a coastline now lined with villas and marinas, and an interior that has stayed pastoral and mountainous. Sardinia lives as two countries turning their backs on each other.
no address
The heel of Italy, between two seas, where conical stone houses stand beside whitewashed, fortified farmhouses. Puglia reveals itself one white village at a time, never in a hurry.
no address
A limestone coastline carved by the Atlantic into arches and coves, and white houses crowned with ornate chimneys found nowhere else in Portugal. The Algarve changes character between its flat, lagoon-lined eastern coast and its wild, open western shore.
no address
An archipelago of white stone and wind, where whitewashed cubic houses cling to treeless slopes. A volcanic island, ancient marble quarries, windmills on the hilltops: the Cyclades never tell the same story twice from one island to the next.
no address
The largest island in Greece, stretched east to west between the Aegean and the Libyan Sea, and cut across by three ranges of bare limestone. Crete changes character with every ridge crossed, from the Minoan palace to the gorges that cut off an entire southern coast.
no address
A volcanic island where rice terraces climb the slopes and the family temple takes up as much room as the house. Bali is travelled by region, not by beach.
no address
Ranked by the number of addresses online, and by nothing else. The list changes as owners publish.
