You’re not in the bustling city anymore. You’re 1,500 meters above sea level, perched on a mountainside and surrounded by verdant pines and rich gardens. Your new home is an authentically preserved French villa. Pause and look around. You’re at Zen Valley Dalat.

Seventeen villas line cobble-stone roads and verdant gardens. In the valley below is the French art deco city of Dalat. Beyond are distant mountains, a cool blue sky and later, a starry night.

This is not your typical resort. This is a part of history. Burgeoning in the 1920’s and 1930’s, when a young Dalat was just beginning to burst from the seams, French villas were raised along the city’s winding hillsides to accommodate French nobles and officials.

Meticulously preserved and bursting with character, Zen Valley’s villas aim to bring you back to bygone years and forgotten times, when a day was spent walking along a grassy knoll or dozing off by a crackling fireplace.

If the city is a roaring racket, Zen Valley is a soft melody you whistle to yourself while on the back porch of a country cabin.