Byblos: a Syrian palace inside a Riviera spa

A renovation becomes more interesting when it knows what to leave alone. Byblos’ Saint-Tropez spa, redesigned in 2023 by Anthony and Marine Ugo, kept elements that connect the rooms with very different periods and places.

Roger Capron’s 1968 mosaic remains part of the hotel’s visual language. In the Lebanese Room, marquetry panels from a seventeenth-century Syrian palace give a treatment space a much older material presence.

Natural stone, wood and onyx organise the wider interior. The relationship with the courtyard allows light to enter a composition based on surfaces rather than elaborate visual effects.

These preserved objects do more than decorate a contemporary spa. They establish another measure of time within it. A visitor encounters new uses in a room where workmanship, pattern and the journey of the material remain visible.