Villas Saint-Jean
Est. 2009 · Villefranche-sur-Mer
A curated portfolio of privately-owned estates across Cap-Ferrat, Antibes, Èze, Mougins and Saint-Tropez — personally visited every spring and autumn by our six destination concierges.
A letter from the founder
— Étienne Maréchal, Founder
When I left the Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc in 2009, the brief from the families I had been looking after was always the same: fewer villas, known better.
Sixteen years later, the portfolio is still thirty-eight properties. I still travel from Villefranche-sur-Mer to inspect each one in May and again in September — checking the cistern, walking the cliff path, sitting on the terrace at seven in the evening when the light moves across the bay. Nothing in our catalogue has been added on a Tuesday afternoon from an email and a set of photographs.
What this means for the people who stay with us is a small, finite collection of houses our team genuinely knows. Our concierges can tell you which bedroom catches the mistral at four in the morning, which villa has a kitchen pass large enough for the chef you used last summer, and how to time the boat from Beaulieu so you arrive at the dock while the rosé is still cold. We are not the largest villa company on the Riviera. We have never tried to be.
If you write to us with a date, a party size and a rough idea of budget, I can promise one thing: a real person will read it the same day, and a real house — not an algorithm — will be suggested to you.
The portfolio
Every villa in our care is exclusively managed by us. The four below sit on the Cap-Ferrat peninsula, on the heights above Antibes, in the village of Èze and on the chemin des Salins in Saint-Tropez.
A 1923 villa at the foot of the lighthouse, with one of the few private moorings on the peninsula.
A walled estate of two hundred olive trees, restored in 2014, with a private path to the corniche.
A former perfumer's estate above Cannes, with a kitchen built for the chef de cuisine you book through us.
A seventeenth-century hôtel particulier behind the Provençal market, restored to retain every original tomette tile.
A low white villa among the pine trees of Chemin des Salins, with a 22-metre lap pool shaded by fig trees.
Our founder's own house for the season, a 1908 property with a deepwater berth for a 24-metre yacht.
By the numbers
Quietly measured, third-party verified.
Average rating across 1,847 verified stays on Booking.com, Airbnb Luxe and direct bookings.
Average response time from our on-call concierge desk, in three time zones, twenty-four hours a day.
Average guest stay length — more than twice the four-night industry standard for a villa stay.
In-house private chef network, including the signature complimentary closing-night tasting menu.
Named in Condé Nast Traveller's Best Villa Rental Specialists, 2019 · 2021 · 2022 · 2023 · 2024.
The concierge
Four of the services our concierges book most weeks. Every one is handled in-house by a member of our Villefranche desk, not outsourced to a third-party marketplace.
Send a list — three items, twenty — and your fridge will be stocked to your taste by the time the keys are handed over. We work with the cheesemonger in old Antibes, the fishmonger at the port of Nice, and the baker in Saint-Pancrace. Nothing is generic; everything is ordered against a brief you wrote.
Twenty-two vetted Riviera chefs sit on our roster. For your final evening, one of them is offered at our cost as a thank-you from the house — a five-course menu of your choosing, served at your villa, paired by a sommelier we have worked with for at least three seasons.
We work directly with Burgess, Camper & Nicholsons and Imperial Yachts on day and week charters. A same-day tender from your villa to a moored yacht — including provisioning, a skipper and a masseur on board — can be confirmed inside twelve hours.
Through our partnership with the Nice Côte d'Azur Airport VIP service, you are met at the aircraft steps, escorted through a private hall and driven to the villa — typically in under forty minutes. Helicopter transfers from Monaco, Cannes and Saint-Tropez are arranged through three vetted operators.
“We have stayed with Étienne's team six summers running — once in Cap-Ferrat, twice in Èze, three times in the same house outside Antibes. The reason we keep returning is not the villas, all of which are excellent. It is that nothing has ever gone wrong in a way that required me to do anything about it.”