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Why we chose Sanilhac-Sagriès

Village over town. Five minutes from the market, fifteen from the Pont du Gard. This is the decision, and the reasoning behind it.

Jan-Willem & Fleur

Hosts at La Valette Boutique · Published June 2026

The question

Why not Uzès itself?

Uzès is beautiful. The Place aux Herbes on a Saturday morning is one of the finest market squares in France. The ducal palace, the medieval streets, the quality of the restaurants — these are simply true, and they are the reason that people who visit once tend to return.

If we had been looking for a town house in a medieval centre, Uzès would have been the obvious answer. But we were looking for the experience of living in this landscape — genuinely in it, not adjacent to it — while retaining easy access to everything the town offers. And when we began looking carefully at what was available within a short drive of the town centre, the calculation changed.

The villages around Uzès offer something the town centre cannot: the countryside, without the compromise of isolation. From Sanilhac-Sagriès, you can walk into garrigue scrubland in five minutes. You can drive to the Saturday market in five minutes. Those two facts coexist, and that combination is not easy to find.

Village life

What the village actually is

Sanilhac-Sagriès is a small commune in the limestone hills south of Uzès. It does not have a hotel, a restaurant, or a tourist office. It has a village square, a church, a handful of houses built from the local stone, and — in the evening — a silence that is uncommon in France in summer.

This is not the kind of place that appears on most-beautiful-villages lists. It does not try to. The economy is agricultural; the rhythm is domestic. That translates into something specific for visitors: a place that is not configured around you. The mornings are yours. The evenings are quiet. The week moves at whatever pace you choose.

We found, during our visits before buying the house, that the experience of Uzès changed when we were staying nearby rather than in the town. We went to the market and came home. We walked in the garrigue before the heat arrived. These are the things that feel like a genuine rest.

Proximity

The arithmetic of distance

Five minutes by car to Uzès. Fifteen to the Pont du Gard. Thirty to Nîmes. Forty-five to Avignon. Fifty to the Mediterranean. The house sits at a position on the map that keeps the whole of the south of France within a manageable drive, without being in the middle of any of it.

The Pont du Gard matters: it is one of the most significant Roman structures in Europe and it is fifteen minutes away. It should be a morning excursion, not a day trip requiring advance planning. The Saturday market in Uzès should be something you wander into and wander back from. These relationships between the house and the places around it change the quality of how time is spent here.

The landscape

Garrigue, vines, and the Gardon

The plateau behind Sanilhac-Sagriès is garrigue: limestone rock, holm oak, wild thyme, rosemary, rockrose. It is dry and aromatic and quiet. In April it flowers yellow. In July it smells of heat and herbs. It begins at the edge of the village.

Below the house, the valley opens towards the Gardon river. In summer, the river is swimmable: clear, cold enough to be a relief, fast enough to be interesting. The access points at Collias, ten minutes away, are less visited than the official swimming areas at the Pont du Gard.

The Duché d’Uzès appellation covers the hills around the town, and there are producers within a short drive working seriously without the price structures of the more famous Rhône appellations. We continue to discover new ones. That ongoing discovery is one of the better side-effects of having chosen this village.

In conclusion

What we would choose again

We purchased La Valette Boutique in March 2026. The property is being prepared for its first guests, and will welcome visitors from 2026. We had spent time in the Gard before — visiting, staying in various places — and this was the decision that committed us to it in a different way.

Sanilhac-Sagriès is five minutes from one of the finest market towns in southern France. It is fifteen minutes from a UNESCO World Heritage Roman aqueduct. It is surrounded by landscape that rewards the kind of attention that a real rest makes possible.

More about us and the house: About Jan-Willem & Fleur → · The apartments →

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