The French Riviera, France

Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild: fairy-tale gardens and exquisitely refined architecture, with sweeping views over the Riviera

Charm and Eccentricity on the Côte d’Azur

As a child, it was my dream, and when I grew up, I had the opportunity to discover it in person. Cap-Martin, Cap-Ferrat, Cap-d’Antibes: these three peninsulas, leaning gracefully into the Mediterranean, comprise some of its most exquisite landscapes. They are adorned with exotic gardens and elegant villas, and imbued with the legendary tales of eccentric travellers who once wandered there.

I think, for example, of two elderly empresses who strolled among the flower beds of the Grand Hotel of Cap-Martin at the close of the nineteenth century: Elizabeth of Austria, the tireless traveller, melancholic at heart, her figure slender and graceful; and Eugénie, widow of Napoléon III. Once rivals in beauty, they now exchanged confidences about a past that extended far beyond politics. What bound them was the sweet, languid winter of the Riviera.

The Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Rock, Cap-d’Antibes, French Riviera

On the third peninsula, Cap-d’Antibes, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald experienced their fragile happiness, consuming alcohol in abundance. Scott wrote Tender Is the Night, gazing upon the sea through an open window on the gulf. Zelda, intoxicated and bathed in moonlight, would call him to join her in diving from cliffs ten metres high — a leap perilous even by day, a near-suicidal folly by night.

The Cap-Ferrat Peninsula, French Riviera, timeless and secluded

At the centre lies Cap-Ferrat, the most refined and elegant corner of the Mediterranean. Here stand some of the world’s most beautiful villas, hidden within dreamy gardens that maintain a discreet tone, for ostentation is considered a vulgarity. This is the domain of a handful of billionaires living in superb seclusion, the Switzerland of the French Riviera.

Here, one leaves behind the film stars lining the Croisette in Cannes and even the nearby Monte Carlo, emblem of all things ostentatious. If there is a place where discretion, tranquillity, and beauty converge in exquisite harmony, it is here. Everything appears in its proper place, honed to perfection, yet without sacrificing substance — the true element that imparts both ease and charm. One sees the glistening rocks, classic Mediterranean pines, palms, and flowerbeds, tended by an army of gardeners vigilant that no petal wilts.

The Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild, rising majestically over the Cap-Ferrat Peninsula

Dominating the peninsula is its crowning jewel, the pink villa of Béatrice Ephrussi de Rothschild, which I never fail to visit each spring. The baroness — patron of the arts and a discerning collector — was notoriously exacting; during the five years it took to build her villa, she dismissed twelve architects. Yet, I believe she knew precisely what she desired. Eccentric to the last, she designed her gardens to resemble the prow of a ship, with the sea on either side, and instructed her gardeners to wear blue caps with red pompoms.

The bedroom and an eighteenth-century gown of Béatrice Ephrussi de Rothschild, preserved in her villa on Cap-Ferrat

A true devotee of the eighteenth century, she entertained her guests dressed as Marie-Antoinette, and I often wonder if she greeted her neighbour, Théodore Reinach — owner of the Villa Kérylos in Beaulieu, archaeologist and admirer of ancient Greece — while he received his guests in a chiton.

It was an extraordinary epoch, the early twentieth century, when the French Riviera, free of any prescribed aesthetic, welcomed an astonishing diversity of architectural styles: neo-Gothic, Italian Renaissance, Belle Époque, Venetian, Arab-Hispanic, and even the Russian dacha, as subjects of the Tsar spent winters on the Riviera, enchanted by its climate.

The Côte d’Azur remains legendary to this day. Its legend, however, was not forged by history alone, but by the whims and passions of early, eccentric admirers who fell in love with the sun, the sea, and the nature of this extraordinary region, transforming sheer cliffs into terrestrial paradises overlooking breathtaking vistas. These early devotees of the Riviera are the ones who shaped it into what it remains today: one of the world’s most alluring and beautiful retreats.

Embark on a journey with my Books in English