At Home in Provence

Ten years ago, while on holiday with her husband and three children in Provence, Vicki Archer, an Australian, fell in love with Mas de Berard, a ramshackle 17th-century farmhouse in St. Remy. Yep, you know the rest: Vicki and David bought and then set out to restore the house, transforming it, over three years, into an exquisite showcase of Provencale style, all country-chic elegance and ease...

Provence All Over the Web...

I've seen lots of great Provence and France articles online during the last month or so. And because I live to please you, dear reader, I've collected some of the best.  Here you go...enjoy!


In the New York Times, Eric Asimov rated 20 rosé wines from Provence. Read all about it here.


The Times also featured a great piece about the Luburon.


Have any of you tasted Andrea Calek's wines?

Not So Fast...

Don't you hate it when you're doing a little renovation and you have to stop because you find 2,000-year-old Roman ruins in the cellar? That's what happened to the folks converting the 12th-century Hotel-Dieu in Marseille into a four-star hotel. Read all about it here.
Thanks to Laurence at ProvenceConfidential for the heads up on this great story and photo.

The Cocktail Drinkers' Guide to Gardening: February

Born in Hampshire, England, my smart (brainy) and smart (elegant) friend James Clay is an artist and sculptor who settled down (somewhat) in St. Remy close to 20 years ago. Over the years, he lovingly created a gorgeous one-hectare garden, filled with fruit, palm, pine, and olive trees (he has 60 olive trees, all of them transplanted), plus many varieties of bamboo, flowering plants and shrubs.

Room with a View

Designed by chef Gilles Stassart and artist Laurent Grasso, this stunning glass box sits atop the 1937 Palais de Tokyo in Paris, which became a contemporary art museum in 2002. Called Art Home or Nomiya, it's an experimental restaurant serving prix fixe meals by reservation only. It's a cooking school, for adults and kids. It's a gourmet shop. And it's also a showroom for the newest Electrolux

Pompeii...the Easy Way

Google’s Street View, which lets you zoom into Google Maps and stroll through city streets in 3D, is amazing in its own right (they've done a pretty comprehensive survey of Provence, by the way). But it just got even more amazing with the addition of the ancient ruins of Pompeii.

Pompeii —the partially buried Roman city near Naples, Italy — is one of the most amazing sights one can see in one’s

Starchitects in Provence

Did everyone know about this but me? Frank Gehry, Jean Nouvel, Renzo Piano, Norman Foster and Tadao Ando, some of the very biggest names in architecture today, are at work on a new art center, restaurant and small hotel at Chateau La Coste winery in Aix.A self-taught architect and Pritzker Prize winner, Ando drafted the art center’s master plan and designed its 3,000-square-meter (32,000-

LUXE IN THE LUBERON

The French soap maker L’Occitane (and two investors) have opened the 46-room Couvent des Minimes Hotel & Spa in a restored 400-year-old stone convent outside Mane, in the Luberon. (It's about an hour from Avignon.) I haven't been there yet but I hear, from well-traveled friends, that it's amazing. The four-star hotel is home to the first L’Occitane Spa in France. Chef Philippe Guerin, 38,