Every design for Hyères

Below the Porte Saint-Paul, the old town of Hyères tumbles down its hill in narrow lanes, the Castle of Saint Bernard above it and the sea a few kilometres off. Palms shade the streets of a town the council likes to call Hyères-les-Palmiers, and in the morning the light already feels like the south.

There is a winter mildness here that people remember long after they leave, the same softness that made this the oldest resort on the French Riviera and drew English visitors in the nineteenth century. Climb a little and you reach the Chapelle Saint-Blaise dite "Tour des Templiers", the last trace of the Knights Templar, and then the Villa Noailles on the hillside. Down in the town, the Jardin Botanique Olbius Riquier keeps the memory of the nurseries that first grew palms and cacti on this coast.

And beyond it all lie the salt flats, the Giens peninsula and, out in the bay, the islands of Porquerolles and Port-Cros.