Le Mas Candille

Le Mas Candille

Most people base themselves in Cannes or Nice and treat the inland villages as a day trip. Mougins rewards the opposite approach. The medieval village sits on a hilltop seven kilometres from Cannes, surrounded by pine forest and olive groves, with views stretching west over the plains of Grasse, and the atmosphere is so completely different from the coast, quieter, more genuinely beautiful, full of art galleries and good restaurants in ancient stone buildings, that staying here rather than down by the sea starts to feel like the more interesting choice rather than the more cautious one. Picasso thought so too, and lived here for the last twelve years of his life. Le Mas Candille sits on the edge of that village, an 18th-century farmhouse set in four hectares of gardens, reopened in 2024 after a full redesign by Hugo Toro, the French-Mexican designer behind Villa Albertine in New York. The rooms are warm and layered, terracotta and honey-mustard tones, bespoke furniture, hand-painted prints, nothing neutral or generic anywhere. The pool is bean-shaped and a particular shade of blue that looks lifted from a Slim Aarons photograph. The spa, a 500-square-metre Clarins-branded Glow House with an indoor-outdoor heated pool, is a serious destination in its own right. Cannes is twenty minutes away when you want it, the village is a short walk uphill, and there are two restaurants, a poolside lunch spot and a dinner restaurant under the pine trees, both good enough that non-guests book them too. The people who will be happiest here are those who want the Riviera's beaches and food scene within easy reach, but find the idea of actually sleeping in the middle of all that noise slightly exhausting. Mougins gives you the beautiful, calm version of the same trip, and Le Mas Candille is currently the most compelling reason to choose it. The short version: A beautifully redesigned 18th-century farmhouse on the edge of Mougins, with 46 rooms, a Clarins spa, and a Slim Aarons pool, seven kilometres from Cannes and pitched at people who want the Riviera at just the right distance.