Hotel Ville d'Hiver

Class: First

Style: Modern design

Rooms: 12

Despite its wintry name the Hôtel Ville d’Hiver is anything but chilly. Arcachon is located on France’s southwestern coast, and if it’s not quite Biarritz, it’s not a world away either — take a wander down to the beach if you’re skeptical. And there’s something incredibly inviting about the Ville d’Hiver itself, an old pump house that’s been lovingly restored to a state that belies its humble origins, and now, with its striped columns, archways and red tile roof, resembles some kind of whimsical mash-up between an Italian villa and the famous mosque at Córdoba.

It’s certainly an improvement on the theme of the hotel-as-farmhouse — not that we’ve anything against farmhouses, but if that’s what you’re after you know where to look. Here you’ll find this improbably jaunty exterior, and hidden within, an interior that’s yet another surprise: in this idyllic natural setting, within this singularly strange building, you’d never expect to find such urbane, stylish interiors.

Industrial spaces, of course, translate well into modern hotels, as they provide plenty of space, plenty of blank canvas to work with. The result is that these twelve bedrooms feel contemporary, as though they were consciously created rather than just shoehorned into an inherited floor plan.

The restaurant, as is the case in a fair number of small French hotels, has a reputation of its own, quite apart from its affiliation with the hotel — in fact there are no doubt some foodies out there who think of the Ville d’Hiver as a restaurant, with some more-than-incidental rooms around the back, rather than the other way around, as a fine hotel which happens to have an equally fine restaurant. They’re both right.