From the town centre of La Croix-Valmer, a small secondary road snakes between grand villas – tokens of an era when tourism revealed one of the most beautiful spots on the French Riviera. Beyond a bend, a discreet tree-lined track leads up to a large gate – the property’s main entrance. Once you have gone through this gate, a drive takes you to a parking area in the shade of age-old trees and to a garage in the eastern section of the house’s semibasement. The edifice faces south-west. It stands on the edge of the property, in the plot’s north-west corner. This frees up a vast area of the garden at a lower level. The facade is coated with white rendering and it has a granite base course. It forms an L shape with a left-hand gable wall that protrudes slightly beneath a roof of green tiles. There is a raised ground floor and a first floor. This facade is punctuated with quoins in a notched pattern and windows of varied shapes set in surrounds with mouldings that have different motifs. On the top level, there is a balcony of finely carved wood that offers an unrivalled sea view and vistas of the lush surroundings. A small flight of steps leads up to the porch of the main entrance door, which takes you into the raised ground floor. A lacquered canopy crowns the porch, which has a glazed wall with tinted edges and wooden framing that recalls the other timber embellishments of the elevations and roofing and that give the edifice stylistic coherence. The eaves are supported with solid braces of wood crafted into curves and painted in the same yellow tone as the window frames, balustrades and shutters. The rear of the house is separated from the front by a small inner court that brings natural light into the adjoining rooms. The rear section is lower in height than the front section. Different roofs of red tiles are juxtaposed upon it. One of them crowns a polygonal tower. This rear section gives the house depth and mostly contains service rooms.

The villa

The ground floor
The spacious entrance hall with a floor of cement tiles and walls and ceilings painted with birds and flowers creates an ambience that is both colourful and formal. This atmosphere immediately gives an impression of the rest of the interior. From this hallway, double doors lead into a lounge on the left and a dining room on the right. At the back of this hall, there is a marble staircase with a wrought-iron balustrade painted white and a wooden handrail. It curves up to the first floor. On the ground floor, the rooms are spacious and the ceiling height reaches four metres. In the lounge, three windows close together look out at the garden. The central window is higher than the other two, which are symmetrical. Through these windows, you can admire a sea view. The ceiling is richly decorated with floral motifs that were painted when the house was built. They were painted by travelling Italian artists who would produce their most beautiful works in the local region. The walls are embellished with dado panelling. One wall features a large fireplace with an inner back wall decorated with fleurs-de-lys like the floor’s cement tiles are too. The dining room is adorned with fine wooden panelling, including dado panelling and a fireplace trumeau panel, and with wooden window and door frames. Bespoke furniture recalls the triple window that fills the room with natural light and offers a sea view. Like in the lounge, the dining room has cement floor tiles, painted floral motifs on the ceiling, an elegant marble fireplace with an inner back wall patterned with fleurs-de-lys, and doors with decorative pediments of finely carved wood. At the back of the dining room, a corridor connects to two small rooms that serve as storerooms or pantries. Beyond them, there is a kitchen with a terracotta floor and an old-style cooker that uses wood and coal. Behind the kitchen and beyond the boiler room, there are three small rooms that are not filled with much natural light. They could be converted into spare bedrooms. Lastly, a spiral staircase leads down to an extensive semibasement.

The upstairs
Like on the ground floor, the first floor is adorned with fine decor: floors of cement tiles, ceilings embellished with floral motifs, Carrara marble fireplaces and the same decorative pediments above the doors. Up on this floor the ceiling is also high: the ceiling height is around 3.3 metres. A broad landing runs around the stairwell and connects to the different rooms on the first floor: a first bedroom, which leads out onto a large balcony with a sea view, a second bedroom on the west side with an old stove, an adjoining bathroom with a pleasant view outside, a spare bedroom and a lavatory. From the landing, a corridor connects to two other bedrooms on the north-west side and a second bathroom.

The basement
The vast semibasement offers potential for development as its ceiling is quite high and windows bring natural light into the whole space, which is made up of a large garage, three rooms that currently serve as cellars and a studio apartment with a shower room to be renovated.