The word is out. The sleepy village of Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, once a secret rendezvous for the avant-garde, is the south of France’s latest star. It’s taken a while. Nearly a century ago, Irish designer Eileen Gray parked her roadster beside the little train station here and set out to explore a footpath above the shimmering Mediterranean. A major figure of the Parisian Art Deco scene, she chose a plot of land amid this rocky terrain to build her visionary home-on-stilts, Villa E-1027 (now restored to perfection), designed with no break between interior and exterior; a prototype for modern living. A few years later, Coco Chanel built Villa Pausa above Roquebrune, entertaining Churchill, Cocteau, Picasso and Dalí. Only Virginia Woolf—a guest at Villa La Souco, another bohemian enclave—remained unimpressed by the isolated villas set on the cliff“like eggs” in a row, where you were doomed to endless contemplation of the sea and the rooftops of the Monte Carlo Casino.
This story is from the February - March - April 2022 edition of Condé Nast Traveller India.
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This story is from the February - March - April 2022 edition of Condé Nast Traveller India.
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