Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild

On the narrow neck of land that joins Cap Ferrat to the Riviera coast, a rose-pink villa stands on the crest of the promontory with the sea on both sides, ringed by nine themed gardens. It was the creation of Baroness Béatrice Ephrussi de Rothschild (1864–1934), a member of the Rothschild banking family and wife of the banker Maurice Ephrussi, who had it built between 1907 and 1912 to designs by the French architect Aaron Messiah and named it Villa Île-de-France.

The gardens were laid out between 1905 and 1912 under the landscape architect Achille Duchêne, and they were conceived as a ship. Seen from the loggia, which served as its bridge, the long garden runs down the spine of the headland like a deck, with water visible on every side; the idea is said to have come from a voyage on the liner Île de France, and the thirty gardeners wore sailors' outfits with red pom-pom berets. The largest garden, in the French formal style, stretches behind the house: a terrace of topiary, then a long pool with fountains and water lilies, ending at a cypress-covered hill crowned by a copy of the Temple of Love from the Petit Trianon at Versailles, from which a water staircase descends. Around it lie a Spanish garden with a shaded courtyard and Catalan jars, a Florentine garden with a grand stair and a grotto facing the harbour of Villefranche-sur-Mer, a stone garden of gargoyles and fragments of old buildings, a Japanese garden, an exotic garden of giant cacti, a rose garden in the owner's favourite pink, a Provençal garden and a garden decorated with Sèvres porcelain.

The baroness filled the house with old master paintings, antique furniture, objets d'art and a large collection of rare porcelain. On her death in 1934 she left the estate and its collections to the Académie des Beaux-Arts of the Institut de France. The gardens are listed among France's Remarkable Gardens, and the villa has been a historic monument since 1996.

Getting there

The villa stands in the commune of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, on the Riviera coast east of Nice, facing the harbour of Villefranche-sur-Mer. The nearest airport is Nice Côte d'Azur Airport (NCE), about 10 km away.