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Walk the promenade Maurice Rouvier from Pont St Jean to around the promentory about 1 Km to "brush past" the sugar pink villa that is Villa Socoglio - or La Fleur du Cap - actor David Niven's home until his death in the early 1980s.
Subsequently Nivens widow became one of Monaco's Princess Grace Kelly's circle of confidants, until the princess's untimely death in 1982. Both sharing roots in Hollywood's film culture and English. By reputation Grace tired of her fairytale princess role, and the claustrophobia of the Monaco royal court..
Ownership then "disappeared" into front-companies. Reference to the refurbishment contract for the villa below indicates it cost getting on for 20m euro just to "smarten it up".
A beautiful place it is, just seen from outside. The Place Niven allows you to see what elsewhere is locked away behind 15 foot gates and electrified fences - well, the exterior at least Leave a Comment
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Perfect in pink, the villa of the Baroness Ephrussi de Rothchild straddles the centre of the main spine of Cap Ferrat. Bequeathed to the French National Trust, the fee for entry will allow you a glimpse of what can be acheived when both immense wealth and good taste come together.
Having seen off Leopold King of the Belgians to buy the parcel of land, the Baroness spent years having the finest artisans and craftsmen working here. Piles of renaissance artifacts were assembled for her choice, and the design matched to her favourite colour pink. . After its completion Ephrussi actually spent very little time here. However you can. Linger a while over a coffee or a beer in the tea-room, with an immaculate interior and a just perfect view out over Villefranche. Utterly magical. Leave a Comment Address: Cap Ferrat, Villefranche sideDirections: Not far from where the main road Nice - Monaco passes St-Jean-Cap-Ferrat at Pont St Jean, take the road up the Cap on the Villefranche side. A ringroute of the Cap is served by the new route 81 bus from Nice (not Sundays)
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The annotation on this farewell momument to King Leopold II (1836 - 1909) of Belgium and the Congo is from "quelques amis....".
This was one gentleman you would not want to call a friend. The wealth that enabled him to buy up parcels of the Cap came from his ruthless exploitation of the "Free State of the Congo" which he created as his own personal possession after tricking tribal chiefs into exchanging their land title for trinkets. Slavery, mutilation, and murder were the order of the day, as Leopold's agents secured for his personal wealth the vast natural resources of the Congo - much from ivory and the booming demand for rubber (thanks to Mr Dunlop).
Leopold avariciously purchased every parcel of land he could on the Cap, creating three villas, linked by secret passages. In one he installed his mistress, a worldly wise Parisian sixteen year-old named Blanche Delacroix. In another, his personal confessor-priest, on hand should his bad behaviour be finally called to account.
Leopold's successor in the Congo (renamed Zaire), General Mobutu, continued Leopold's tradition of kleptocracy for thirty years, bleeding his country dry before following Leopold's footsteps to the Riviera , setting up home at the Villa del Mare at Roquebrunne, some ten miles further up the coast.
Alas great wealth rarely comes with clean hands, but that's not reason to diminish the beauty and majesty of the Cap Ferrat. Leave a Comment
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Flying out from Nice airport sometimes affords a magnificant view over this stretch of the Riviera coastline, Nice and the arriere pays and far back to the snow-capped Alps behind.
From high up you can see the proximity of the Cap Ferrat to Nice and Mont Boron, the connecting deepwater harbour of Villefranche and Beaulieu either side of the Cap, and the hills stretching up the coast towards Monaco.
Coming the other way , when descending in to Nice airport, window seats on the lefthand side of the airplane are rewarded by the total panorama from the gulf of St Tropez through to Cap d'Antibes and the Var. Leave a Comment
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Baroness Ephrussi de Rothchild's gardens are in truly the most perfect setting on the med.
Seven seperately themed gardens allow you to wander away from the Villa into a new pleasure at each turn. Here a Japanese garden, there a spanish garden, alongside a full French Provencale garden..
It is said that Beatrice Ephrussi de Rothschild considered the Villa Ile de France - straddling the Cap - as though an ocean liner. Some twenty gardeners were employed and worked in full sailors uniforms, complete with red pompoms, to bring this place to perfection.
After her divorce she left, never to return.
Sit a while and capture this piece of paradise in your minds eye, so you can revisit it at will. Leave a Comment Address: Villa Ile de France, Cap Ferat
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Maybe its the light, maybe its the mountains reaching east towards Monaco, maybe its the calm open vista, maybe its the clinking of tethered yatch ropes against masts. Whatever, St Jean is a magical place you don't have to endure 12 hours longhaul to get to: its 15 minutes on the bus out of Nice to Pont St Jean, then fifteen minutes walk along the Promenade Maurice Rouvier. And there you are. Leave a Comment
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An occasionally changing display of modern sculptures in the promenade overlooking the harbour at Saint Jean. A nice touch which shows the pride they take in their lovely village. Not covered in grafitti, not vandalised, as they would be in any "urban" setting. Leave a Comment
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Some of the most oppulent and expensive real estate on the planet can be found on the elongated peninsula of Cap Ferrat, seen here from the old Fort on Mont Alban above Nice.
Home at one time to King Leopold of the Belgians and the Congo, the Rothchilds, wealthy American industrialists and socialites, Agnelli of Fiat, Somerset Maugham, Charlie Chaplin, David Niven. This wonderful place is the apex of the French Riviera's "golden triangle", of Cap Ferrat, Beaulieu and Villefranche.
Yes, there are trophy homes in Malibu or Beverley Hills, tropical paradises in Barbados or the Seychelles. But none of those places have real culture. People like Cliff Richard and ex-Page 3 kiss-and-tell models have homes in Barbados. They live in a vacuous pretend paradise where reality is just poor people waiting table for tuppence. This is Europe. Real people live here. It has real history and class. Go back a hundred years and only royalty could afford to reach here. Enter La Reserve at Beaulieu, and maybe, just maybe, they will serve you. This is not a "resort", it is a real place. Leave a Comment
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This charming zoo offers some relief from the relentless opulence of the Cap. Unusual for todays "modern" zoo - instead of earnest education and politically correct environmentalism - Cap Ferrat zoo has just old fashioned chimpanzees tea parties , goats, flamingoes, zebras, crocodiles and fun things that amuse adults and children alike.
The highlight is the cheeky monkeys who reach out from their cage to take nuts from the hands of visitors. Face to face with the ancestors. Leave a Comment Directions: Close by to the Ephrussi villa, on the Villefranche side of the Cap, follow the road signs for "Zoo"
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When King Leopold of the Belgians lived on the Cap he built a villa for each of his three mistresses and one for his confessor, to be always on hand. The confessors role was probably to excuse his petty infidelities rather than his rape of the Congo. No matter because the Congo continued to be raped by its own corrupt African leaders long after his demise. .
In the nineteen twenties, Somerset Maugham bought the priest's house, and dubbed it La Mauresque, due to its Moorish design influences. The attraction for some of Cap Ferrat was that its privacy permitted the wealthy an openly gay lifestyle that would not have been tolerated in more repressed European high society. So the mistresses of King Leopold and their web of secret tunnels gave way to the evolution of a different lifestyle.
Since Maugham's death in 1965, the plot has been broken up by developers, however someone somewhere occupies what remains of this piece of history. All that can be seen is the sign from the roadside. Leave a Comment
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on June 28, 2005
