El Gouna, Red Sea

Some houses are built; this one was gathered. La Maison Bleue began as a guest house on the northern shore of Mangroovy Beach — commissioned by Samih Sawiris, conceived by the antiques collector Amr Khalil with architect Olivier Sednaoui, and filled, over years, with what a nineteenth-century Levantine merchant might plausibly have carried home: Syrian arches, Venetian tiling, Minoan murals, Catalan mosaic, velvet, frescoes, parquet and marble, all behind a powder-blue façade that dissolves into the desert sky. Thirteen suites, each with its own temper, most facing the mountains of the Western Desert. Gardens by the French landscaper Louis Benech run down to a private lagoon and its sand. In the kitchen, Vincent Guillou cooks Europe and Egypt from the greenhouse at the foot of the garden. A member of Relais & Châteaux, listed by the Michelin Guide, adults only, and — mercifully — indifferent to the clock.

It is adults only, and means it. Sixteen and over. No cots, no extra beds, no exceptions. The quiet you are paying for is the quiet that rule protects.

Thirteen suites, and a house that can be taken whole. That is the pleasure and the catch. Exclusive use is possible for a wedding or a family gathering; equally, someone else's celebration can fill the house on your dates. We check the diary before we quote, and again before we confirm.