Paradise Regained

An American designer returns to his roots on the French Riviera when he acquires a storied house and the terraced garden he played in as a child, and restores them to their former glory

- Peter Terzian

John-Mark Horton grew up fluent in both French and English, and no matter which language he is speaking, he says, his accent falls somewhere between the two. The Los Angeles–based interior designer was raised in Chicago but spent vacations visiting his mother’s French-Greek parents, who lived in Monaco, the fashionable city-state on the French Riviera. In the late 1960s, Horton’s mother came to own a pied-à-terre in the nearby medieval village of Roquebrune. A twisting warren of red-tile roofs, narrow streets, and arched passageways, Roquebrune spills down a steep hillside. Presided over by a 10th-century castle, the village lies at the heart of the commune of Roquebrune- Cap-Martin; the Italian border is a few miles away.

When in Roquebrune, Horton’s mother would call on her friends Raymond Poteau and Henry Clarke. In the 1950s, Poteau, a decorator and antiques dealer from northern France, had purchased a multilevel living space that had once been the almshouse of a church. A few years later, Poteau and Clarke, an American photographer for Vogue, became a couple, and over time they added floors above and around, as well as a three story annex separated from the main house. (“The entire village is one large, interconnected apartment building, like a beehive,” explains Horton.) A walled produce garden lay at the foot of the house, and Poteau bought it parcel by parcel from his neighboring villagers. He gradually turned it into a formal garden with wide-angle views of the sea.