Baumaniere Les Baux-de-Provence

Jean Cocteau came to the Val d'Enfer, Hell's Valley, in 1959 to film Le Testament d'Orphée among its limestone cliffs and old quarries, and Orpheus could hardly have asked for a better-named location. Raymond Thuilier had been there sixteen years by then. He bought a sixteenth-century farmhouse in the valley in 1943 and let its first rooms in 1945, and by 1954 its restaurant, L'Oustau de Baumanière, had three Michelin stars. The farmhouse is still the middle of a 20-hectare estate, and four more houses are spread through the olive groves and vines around it, among them the eighteenth-century Manoir, 900 metres off, above a garden of white roses. Inside, the old stone stays where it was: in one room a carved stone fireplace hood now presides over a wooden cabinet and a wall of glazed brown tiles, a quiet retirement for a hearth.

Recommended for anyone who would cross Provence for a dinner, and for families who would like to come along. Under Glenn Viel, L'Oustau cooks red mullet in farmhouse cream with vegetables from the estate's organic garden; La Cabro d'Or, opened in 1961, has a terrace under mulberry trees. Most rooms take a baby or children under twelve, some Prestige Deluxe rooms connect, and the family house sleeps twelve; the spa has treatments for ages five to eighteen. Three of the houses have a pool, open in summer, and the ruined castle at Les Baux is two kilometres up the road, best taken in the morning before the heat. Saint-Rémy's Wednesday market is thirteen minutes' drive. Then comes the aperitif in the wine cellar, among 50,000 bottles: as underworlds go, Orpheus had it worse.