This villa was built from 1905 to 1912 for Baroness Charlotte Béatrice Ephrussi de Rothschild (you imagine the size of her name card) on the peninsula of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat which is located just outside Nice going East towards Italy, between the towns of Villefranche and Beaulieu/Mer. Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat at the beginning of the 20th century was the hub of the world's jet-set society: King Leopold II of Belgium, Charlie Chaplin, David Niven, Somerset Maugham, Jean Cocteau, Isadora Duncan, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton to name just a few. They came in the winter for the weather, the tranquility... and the casinos!

So many things can be said about the baroness's very excentric personnality and her whims (and, as usual, I will tell you ALL about her in hired/due time) but one thing has to be said in advance in her honor: she bought the best of what money could buy! Besides the villa itself, the numerous delightful antiques and paintings, the (no less than 9) different atmosphere-gardens on a rocky area of 17 acres are unbelievable!

Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat peninsula from a distance.

At the Baroness's death in 1934, as she had no children, she donated her property to the State. It opened to the public a few years later. Nowadays the Villa welcomes around 160,000 visitors a year which makes it one of the most visited places of the Côte d'Azur and that's one of the most well-deserved recognitions that I can think of. Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat is still a magnet for the "elite" as many of these villas are still privately owned

(I'll give you a few names when I see you).

Oh, one last (but not least) thing: we can combine this visit with the visit of the Villa Kérylos at the very nearby town of Beaulieu-sur-Mer. It's a stunning modern version of a Greek villa of the 2nd century BC!

Can you tell she loved her pets? (wait until you hear what the pets were).

And while we're there, we will probably want to have a simple (but rather subtle) lunch on their outdoor terrace:

But the indoor-restaurant "works" too: