Inside the 17th-Century Chapel

Tucked between the olive grove and the herb garden, our small stone Chapel is the most quietly remarkable building on the property. Most guests find it on their second or third day, almost by accident.

It was not built here. The Chapel was constructed in the seventeenth century at the Convent of the Carmelites in Dijon, France. When the convent was dismantled in the 1990s, the stones — every block numbered — were crated and shipped to Vista, California. In 2006, a team of French masons reassembled them on this hillside, exactly as they had stood for three hundred years.

Inside, the air is cool and slightly resinous. The windows are simple. A bench runs along one wall. There is no schedule, no program, no instruction. Guests use the Chapel however they wish — for ten minutes of silence between sessions, for prayer, for a long exhale before dinner.

We are not a religious property. The Chapel is offered the way the trails are offered — as a place that has its own gravity, that asks nothing of you, and that tends to give back more than you expected.

If you walk in and find someone already there, simply nod and take the other bench. Most days, the silence is shared without a word.

Hours are dawn to dusk. The door is never locked.