DESIGN

Moulin Moulin

Dannes - France

An old flour mill on the Opal Coast, reborn as six rooms, a private pond, and enough vintage design pieces to fill a small museum.

Adults Only

Beach 5km

Honesty Bar

Bike Rental

Massage

Promenade

THE SETTING

Moulin Moulin is a boutique guesthouse on France’s Opal Coast, built into the old corps de logis of a flour mill in Dannes, a small village roughly midway between Le Touquet and Hardelot. The mill’s original wheel still stands, one of the only pieces of the working building left after decades of change. Everything else here has been rebuilt, room by room, around a private pond the property wraps almost entirely around.

Nicolas Marion and Jérémy Zitelli, two Lille transplants — a retail designer and an optician by training — bought the property in 2021, drawn in by the building’s oddly original shape: a hybrid roof, part slate and part tile, and two structures stitched together, one in brick, one in stone half-buried under Virginia creeper. What followed was a full renovation, room by room, inside the Parc naturel régional des Caps et Marais d’Opale.

THE ROOMS

Four bedrooms sit on the first floor of the main house, each named for one of the owners’ grandmothers and each with a distinct palette — sage, mustard, powder pink — built around vintage furniture the two of them had been collecting for years before they ever thought to open a guesthouse. Anne-Marie, warm and terracotta-toned in honour of what they call “the grandmother from the southwest,” looks out over the garden; Élia and Claude both face the pond. Pierre Paulin, Eames, Gae Aulenti and pieces by younger French designers like Big-Game and Constance Guisset sit alongside flea-market finds and family pieces — curated the way you’d hang a small exhibition, not decorate a bedroom.

Two suites, Grande Boudeuse and Petite Boudeuse, sit apart from the main house with their own private terraces, offering a little more distance and quiet. The main house rooms and both suites are set up for guests aged 14 and over, unless the whole property is booked privately, in which case children are welcome too.

For total privacy, there’s also La Maison du Meunier, a fully independent cottage that was once home to Alice and Auguste, the mill’s caretakers. Behind its white-brick façade: two bedrooms, one pink with a private bath, one deep green with a walk-in shower, plus a proper kitchen, a living room with a fireplace and a library of cookbooks and novels, and a private terrace with a fire pit. It runs on its own — a stay here can’t be combined with a night in the main house next door — and it’s built for guests who want a self-catering week instead of a bed-and-breakfast weekend.

THE FOOD

The dining room now sits inside the old mill’s stone structure, a light-filled space looking out over the pond and garden — new since the property’s latest renovation, and easily the best seat in the house for breakfast: fresh, local produce, home-made recipes, and pastries that change with what’s in season.

Beyond breakfast, Moulin Moulin has quietly moved past the simple bed-and-guesthouse model. What used to be a self-service pantry has grown into a proper honesty bar, stocked around the clock with far more dishes, snacks and drinks than the name suggests, and there’s now an à la carte menu guests can order from directly — enough that leaving the property for dinner has become optional, not necessary.

THE STAY

The old séjour — the original lounge and dining room — has been entirely reworked into a double lounge, more spacious and considerably more sociable than what it replaced, paired with a new reception area and small boutique for guests checking in. Outside, a newly built covered terrace stretches out directly over the water, arguably the single most striking addition from the recent renovation and the obvious place to end most evenings.

Beyond the terrace, a path circles the full length of the pond, bikes are available for exploring the surrounding villages and coastline — the property sits directly on the Vélomaritime/EuroVelo cycling route — and an old green rowing boat sits moored at the water’s edge, more decorative than functional but very photogenic. The whole place is built around an idea the owners describe openly as something close to a retreat: slow down, breathe, write, create, meet people, share a meal — less a checklist of amenities than a mood they’ve deliberately built the property around.

AROUND MOULIN MOULIN

Dannes is barely more than a crossroads, but the coast and the countryside both open up quickly from here. The nearest beach is about 5km away, reachable by road or on foot through the Dunes du Mont Saint-Frieux, and Sainte-Cécile-Plage — a proper seaside town — is roughly eight minutes by car or a pleasant fifteen-minute ride by bike. Le Touquet and Hardelot, the Opal Coast’s two best-known resort towns, sit almost equidistant from the property in either direction, each an easy day trip.

Further along the coast, the chalk cliffs of Cap Gris-Nez and Cap Blanc-Nez are worth the drive on a clear day — some of the most dramatic coastal scenery in northern France, and close enough to England that you can see it from the cliff tops. Boulogne-sur-Mer, with its aquarium and old walled town, is about 25 minutes away and the closest train connection, useful for guests arriving without a car.

THE OWNERS

Nicolas & Jérémy left Lille in 2021 for a life they’d been circling for years. Nicolas a retail designer, Jérémy an optician, neither with a background in hospitality, both originally drawn further south along the coast until this odd, oddly-shaped mill building changed their plans and kept them in the north instead. Everything inside — the furniture, the objects, the way each room feels distinct from the next — comes from what they’d already collected over years of city living, assembled here the way you’d put together a collection worth showing, not simply furnish a house.

It shows in how the property keeps evolving. What started as four rooms and a simple self-service pantry has, over a few years, grown a second cottage, a proper dining room, a real bar, and a terrace built out over the water — the kind of steady, considered expansion that only happens when the people running a place actually live in it.

GOOD TO KNOW

Style — Design-led guesthouse in a converted flour mill, adults-focused (from age 14 in the main house and suites)

Rooms — 4 bedrooms (Anne-Marie, Élia, Nina, Claude), 2 garden suites (Grande Boudeuse, Petite Boudeuse), plus La Maison du Meunier — an independent 2-bedroom cottage

Location — 40 Rue du Centre, Dannes, Pas-de-Calais — within the Parc naturel régional des Caps et Marais d’Opale, roughly midway between Le Touquet and Hardelot

Getting there — Boulogne-sur-Mer (~25 min, nearest train station); directly on the Vélomaritime/EuroVelo cycling route

Extras — Honesty bar with à la carte food menu, bikes provided, pond-side walking path, covered terrace over the water, boutique at reception

Rates — From around €160 per night for rooms and suites (La Maison du Meunier priced separately — confirm with the property)

Best for — Couples wanting a slow, design-filled escape on the Opal Coast