Annecy · Haute-Savoie
Mirelac
A 1903 villa on the water with thirty-six rooms, a glazed veranda and a working boathouse. The small casino is behind the double doors next to reception.
The house
A silk merchant's summer house, still doing its job
A Lyon silk family built the villa in 1903 so they would have somewhere to spend July. The drive runs along the road side behind plane trees, and the whole water side was given over to glass. Because of that, breakfast is bright by half past seven, and by six in the evening the light comes off the lake and onto the veranda ceiling.
The thirty-six rooms are spread over three floors. Those on the south side look straight at the mountains, while the garden side is quieter and about two degrees cooler in August.
Not much has been knocked through, so you'll find the original staircase and shutters, and above the second floor there's no lift at all. The boathouse at the bottom of the lawn still holds two boats, and the jetty is twenty-two metres of larch that gets replaced a plank at a time.
Guests park their own cars, and there's no spa or conference suite. What the house has is a lake, a kitchen, a bar, a gaming room and thirty-six beds.
The lake is 200 metres from the front steps, and it is the first thing you hear in the morning: a boat engine, then quiet.Marianne Fauvel, head of reception
Rooms
Four kinds of room, four different mornings
Tournette rooms open onto a balcony over the garden, and on a clear day the mountain they're named for is straight ahead. The Belvédère rooms face the water and get the long view. Down on the ground floor, the Platane rooms sit under the plane trees with a door of their own onto the lawn. Up in the roof, the Mansarde rooms keep the beams where the carpenters put them.
Every room has a kettle, a wardrobe with hangers in it, and windows that open. We skip the minibar because the bar is downstairs and it's better.
Dining
La Véranda, Bar Soie and Le Hangar
There are three places to eat and drink, all inside the property. La Véranda, the glazed room on the water side, is open for breakfast and dinner. The evening tends to start in Bar Soie, the panelled room off the hall. Down at the boathouse, Le Hangar is a counter where lunch is cold and quick and eaten standing up if the weather holds.
The kitchen buys féra and perch from the lake when the boats bring them, and reblochon from a dairy twenty minutes up the valley.
Dinner finishes late here because nobody wants to leave the veranda while there is still light on the water.Pierre Ollivier, kitchen
Ground floor, east wing
Mirelac Casino
The hotel's own casino is through the double doors to the left of reception, a few steps across the hall. It's one room in the east wing of the villa, part of the same building, and you reach it without going outside. There are nine tables and a bar at the back, and the doors open in the evening.
The age is 18 under French law. Photo identification is checked at the door on every visit, even a second one on the same evening, and that applies to hotel guests too.
The staff working that night set the limits on the floor, so ask before you sit down. If you'd like to be excluded, say so at reception: self-exclusion is arranged there in person, whenever you want it, and takes about five minutes.
This is a land-based room in a hotel. The website itself offers no games, takes no bets, and accepts no deposits or payments.
Where you are
Twenty minutes' walk from the old town
The Thiou and the Vassé run through the centre of Annecy, past the Palais de l'Île. From the bottom of our garden the lake path takes you there on the flat in about twenty minutes, with no road to cross.
Behind the house the ground climbs. Le Semnoz is a thirty-minute drive to the summit road or four hours on foot, and La Tournette takes a full day. Annecy station is 2.4 km away, Geneva airport fifty minutes by road, and the lake shuttle calls at Petit Port from April to October.