Six Senses Shaharut
Forty-six acres cut into a cliff, looking across a valley at mountains that belong to another country.
Six Senses Shaharut sits on about forty-six acres worked into a cliff above the Arava Valley, in the far south of Israel's Negev. The estate is small by the measures of this register and its enclosure is entirely borrowed: the valley in front is empty, the Edom mountains that colour the view at dusk stand across the border in Jordan, and the approach is three kilometres of single-lane road off the highway. Buildings were cut into the rock rather than set on it, in local stone and pigment, so that the resort would read as a Nabataean village that had always been there.
The house opened in August 2021 with sixty suites and villas, announced at fifty-eight before completion, and carries a spa, camel stables with an arena, and an amphitheatre shaped from the contours of the ground. The owner Ronny Douek spent years on the design, beginning with research commissioned from the architecture department at Bezalel. The nearest neighbours matter here: the village of Shaharut is a community of about a hundred and sixty-four people who chose to live off the grid, and the resort's low profile and hidden services were shaped partly to keep faith with them.
A borrowed horizon. Forty-six acres buy the cliff and nothing beyond it. What makes this a world of its own is a valley nobody has built in and a mountain range in a different state.
A boundary agreed with neighbours. The village over the hill had standing to object, and the architecture answers it. Few estates in this collection had to negotiate their appearance with the people next to them.
Who it is not for
Shaharut is wrong for travellers who want green ground: this is rock and cactus, and the summer heat in the Arava is severe. It is wrong for anyone who wants a destination at hand, since Eilat is an hour and everything else is further. It is wrong for guests who need to arrive easily, because the last three kilometres are a single-lane desert road. For a desert estate that owns its emptiness, Amangiri holds six hundred acres in Utah.
Sources
- Operator and trade record - resort opened August 2021 in the Arava Valley, southern Negev, with sixty suites and villas on a footprint of about forty-six acres; camel stables, an amphitheatre shaped from the terrain, and a Six Senses spa
- Israeli press reporting - the buildings were cut into the mountain in local stone and pigment; owner Ronny Douek commissioned design research from the Bezalel Academy; the neighbouring village of Shaharut is an off-grid community of about a hundred and sixty-four residents, some of whom work at the resort
Verification
- Official source
- Not yet checked
- Sources disagree
- the resort was announced at fifty-eight suites and villas and opened with sixty.
- Property confirmation
- Pending
- Last verified
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Booking
Private Resorts arranges each stay on request, quoting the rates available for the resort and dates. No benefit should be assumed unless it is confirmed in writing for the individual reservation.
Request a proposalClassified by The Resort Collection House · The Register · Edition 2026 · LHL-E-130
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