NOVAE : Beaulieu-sur-Mer // Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild // Greek Villa Kerylos

The area of Beaulieu-sur-Mer and Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat are well known for their exquisite properties, two of which you can visit.

Catch the train to Beaulieu-sur-Mer station, as all of the train stations and train routes along the French Rivera, most are less than beautiful.

Walk from the station down towards Greek Villa Kerylos (mentioned later in the post.) You can visit or continue down along the beach or walkways.

You will notice on the main beaches and any private beaches, coloured beach umbrellas all set up in a uniformed way, these are the beach clubs which can charge from 16 to 30 euros a day for the use of their facilities.

At the end of the beach is a Promenade Maurice Rouvier that, I believe winds around the coast of Cap Ferrat, A and I walked as far as the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild which took about 10 minutes.

V I L L A E P H R U S S I D E R O T H S C H I L D

The villa is known for its nine amazing gardens, muscial fountains and the Rothschild art collection of over 5,000 pieces

Béatrice Ephrussi de Rothschild was married at nineteen to Maurice Ephrussi, a Parisian banker originally from Russia, a friend of her father Baron Alphonse de Rothschild and fifteen years her senior.
Maurice through gambling acquired the couple 30 million euro of debt. After 21 years of marriage, divorce was resolved through court.

The following year Baron de Rothschild died leaving Beatrice her vast fortune.

Beatrice decided to construct Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild.

She discovered this plot of land in 1906, Béatrice fell in love with the beauty of the spot. However, back then, it was no more than an arid rock crossed by a mule track. When she learnt that the land was for sale, and that the King of Belgium Léopold II was also interested in it, she bought it immediately.
Work began in 1907 and took five years. Béatrice Ephrussi appears to have been a particularly difficult client. She refused projects proposed by a dozen major architects, believing them to be “idiotic”. And so, projects by Claude Girault, the architect of the Petit Palais in Paris, and even Henri-Paul Nénot, winner of the Prix de Rome and most famously architect of the new Sorbonne, were dismissed. Thus, the project came to be placed in the hands of the architect Jacques-Marcel Auburtin, who scrupulously satisfied all of Béatrice’s requirements. He was assisted by Aaron Messiah, an architect from Nice who would go on to build several villas for the aristocracy.

Beatrice made this her winter residence from 1912 onwards and came here regularly for over ten years, during which she split her time between Paris, Monaco and Deauville.
In 1933, one year before her death, Béatrice bequeathed her Villa and all of her collections to the Académie des Beaux-Arts.

T H E G A R D E N S

The Villa is surrounded by nine magnificent gardens.

The gardens took seven years to complete.
Baroness called on Harold Peto and Achille Duchêne to complete the French Garden which took priority, as the Villa was completed after only four years.

Hundreds of Italian workers were hired for these colossal excavation works, they used dynamite to create the grounds and bring in enormous quantities of earth to make it flat.

The Jardin Exotique, Provencal, Japanais, Lapidaire, Florentin, De Sevres and the Roseraire we owe to Louis Marchand.

In 1934, when Béatrice Ephrussi died and left her property to the Institut de France, Louis Marchand was commissioned with restoring the Villa grounds. He decided to level the ground, to bring the ornamental ponds back to life and to create themed gardens. In three years, he created a garden complex, including a bamboo plantation which no longer exists.

During the war, Cap Ferrat was vacated by all its inhabitants and mined. The Villa was left unmonitored and its garden abandoned for two years. On his return in 1945, Louis Marchand resumed his work on the gardens, which were badly damaged, and rapidly restored them to their pre-war splendour.

Jardin Japanais

G R E E K V I L L A K E R Y L O S

Built between 1902 and 1908 in the period the French call the "Belle Epoque", it is a unique reconstruction of an ancient Greek home. "Kerylos" means Halcyon, often identified as a kingfisher, a poetic mythical bird, considered to be a bird of good omen.

This is a tribute to Greek civilisation by two lovers of Ancient Greece, Théodore Reinach, an archaeologist and patron of the arts and Emmanuel Pontremoli, an inspired architect.

The Villa is a faithful reconstruction of Greek noble houses built on the island of Delos in the 2nd century B.C.

This island in the Cyclades archipelago is situated in the Aegean Sea, south of Athens. Far from being just a simple reproduction of dwellings on the island of Delos, Villa Kerylos is a reinvention of ancient Greece. From the arrangement of the rooms to the sophisticated detail of the décor, everything was designed to recreate the atmosphere of a luxurious Greek villa.

For both men, the aim was not to produce a pastiche but to create an original work by "thinking Greek". Emmanuel Pontremoli ingeniously managed to subtly incorporate the modern comfort of villas from the Belle Epoque era into the luxurious setting of a classical ancient villa.

For example, the bath in the Balaneion (thermal baths) was filled with water using the taps hidden under round grates and the action of the astonishing folding piano designed by Pleyel is hidden in a case made from the wood of a lemon tree.