Luxury bastides with pool for sale La Valette-du-Var, France

A hillside villa in Toulon, south-east France, built on a 17th-century priory with vast wooded grounds and a sweeping view of the city’s natural harbour. An electric gate marks the main entrance. You reach it via a steep lane with two bends that is around 100 metres long. Beyond the gate, on the left, there is a large, flat parking space for four vehicles. A shelter there offers space for three vehicles. At a lower level, there is a half-open second space where two other vehicles can be parked. A few steps take you up to a wrought-iron double-leaf gate that leads into a covered entrance area from where you enter the house. The villa, crowned with a roof of barrel tiles, has two floors, extended with terraces on three sides. It was entirely renovated in the early 1990s, then in 1998. Its one-metre-thick walls rendered with roughcast bear witness to the building’s long history: the place was probably a priory that dated back to the 17th century – this is suggested by a millstone bearing the year ‘1630’ that was found on the site. The south-facing house is rectangular, built upon the rocky hillside with a flat ground floor. It offers a floor area of around 280m². Its many sliding picture windows across its facade herald a bright interior bathed in natural light. These windows are fitted with electric roller shutters. The west gable wall is made of exposed pointed stonework. A niche in this wall houses two small statues of cherubs. A vast terrace in front of the south-facing facade of white rendering offers a spectacular vista of the city below and, beyond it, Toulon’s natural harbour. On this terrace, you can relax in an infinity pool where you can admire an unrivalled view of the sea. On the left, two shelters offer shade and coolness in the summer heat. On the north side, two walkways lead to the first-floor terrace and the garden. The villa is surrounded by its vast wooded grounds on a slope.

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A renovated house with swimming pool in a prominent position in Provence, next to the foot of the Maures mountains and with a view of the Golden Islands and the sea. As the road winds up the hillside, after a bend, the iron gates of the estate come into view. They open onto a driveway of about 100 m lined with holm oaks, leading to the house set on a flat outcrop of more than 3,300 m². First, the eastern façade of the building can be made out, with a parking area for two vehicles alongside. Behind a narrow dry-stone porch, a shaded inner courtyard leads to the swimming pool, just around the corner at the back of the house. Built in 1968, the three-storey house with a total floor area of 225 m² is arranged in a succession of light-filled living spaces. The complex is built around a semi-enclosed courtyard facing north, an ideal spot during the summer months as it provides shade and coolness. The upper floor can be accessed from both indoors and outdoors, as an exterior stone staircase secured by a wrought iron balustrade with decorative scrolls leads upstairs, so that this level could potentially be used independently. Topped with a gable roof clad with monk-and-nun tiles and bordered by a triple cornice of shortened tiles, the facades with pink ochre rendering and oeil-de-bœuf windows lend the building its typical Provence charm. Large windows and doors in the main rooms add a modern, fluid feel to the property. Finally, the landscape to the south includes a vast area of wooded terraces, offering a sweeping view of woodlands and vineyards, with the Mediterranean Sea on the horizon. An adjoining plot of more than 1.5 ha, which is sold separately, is home to several horses and features paddocks, a shelter and a dressage arena.