Private Villas

Give yourself space to spread out. A private villa is the format for the trip you don't want to share — a household, a wedding party, a family that's grown, or just the wish for a kitchen of one's own. The villas in this collection have been visited and reviewed by our editors, who have developed exceedingly high standards. If the boat isn't waiting on the jetty, they'll tell us about it.

The edit reaches across the price spectrum. In the Bahamas, Over Yonder Cay turns a private island into a household; in France, Château Bouffémont occupies the 1860 Beaux-Arts seat of the Empain family — the dynasty that built the Paris Métro — restored and exclusive-hire for twenty-seven, twenty minutes from Charles de Gaulle. In the French Alps, Ferme De Moudon is Nicky Dobree's 300-year-old farmhouse restored on Grand Designs Abroad, sleeping ten to twelve. On Zakynthos, Paliokaliva Village — named Europe's Best Apartment Hotel by the Boutique Hotel Club — sets eighteen stone villas in olive groves above Tsilivi; on Mykonos, the Big Blue Beach Villa anchors six bedrooms on a 5,000-square-metre seafront estate at Aleomandra. Leobo Private Reserve adds the South African Waterberg, and Villa La Cassinella anchors a Lake Como peninsula.

Boats, butlers, exclusive-hire. The edit below holds the villa for it.