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Award-winning meals prepared from home-grown produce, fresh fish and local lamb, in the heart of the lavender fields.

Deceptively simple Provençale fare in lovely 18th-century buildings.

Inventive dishes such as pigeon with olives and cepes. Dinner only.

The Romans were among the first to revere the healing properties of the thermal springs which flow from Mont Ste-Victoire, where you can take the waters in a modernized 18th-century palace, with an array of power showers, hydro-massage and mud wraps to eliminate stress and toxins.

Monte Carlo’s most glamorous hotel has direct access to the most modern health spa in Europe. The hotel also has four restaurants, its own hairdresser and luxury boutiques.

Rivaling the Hermitage for belle époque splendour, the Hôtel de Paris has a famous café-terrace on the ground floor (see Café de Paris, Monte Carlo) and is within staggering distance of the casino (see Casino de Monte Carlo). Queen Victoria stayed here, as have a host of other crowned heads and celebrities.

Book years ahead to mingle with the rich and famous at this luxurious hotel – the flagship of Riviera hedonism. The list of celebrity guests stretches back decades and includes such current stars as Gwyneth Paltrow and Leonardo Di Caprio (see Hôtel du Cap Eden Roc, Antibes).

As ostentatious as the Negresco in its way, the Eden Roc is another landmark of the Riviera and has been for more than a century. It offers exclusivity and film-star chic in tropical gardens and is, in a word, idyllic.

Just outside Avignon, the 4-star hotel is a complex of 30 junior suites, each with whirlpool bath. There are also 18- and 9-hole golf courses.

Right in the centre of the thermal resort of Digne, this luxurious hotel offers a range of treatments in the adjoining hot springs, which are used to treat arthritis, rheumatism and a range of respiratory conditions.