Fully renovated in a contemporary style hung with urban photography, the Best Western Linko Hotel, Aubagne, France, sits between the sea and the hills at the foot of the Garlaban, with a rooftop and two conference rooms for work or unwinding in a town of narrow, colourful streets and shaded squares.
The setting makes an easy base for both business and leisure, with the old town and its potters' workshops close at hand. Aubagne has long been a town of clay, the home of the little painted santon figures of Provence.
The Garlaban hills above the town are the landscape of Marcel Pagnol's childhood, the country of his novels and films, crisscrossed by walking trails into the scrubland, with the great ridge of the Sainte-Baume, the calanques of the coast, and the city of Marseille all close by. Up on the heights, the bare limestone and the pines hold the light that Pagnol wrote about.