Paris

After the indelible impression that the villa Ephrussi de Rotshild left on us, let’s leave Cap Ferrat, return to the coastal winding road and we arrive in BEAULIEU (population 4000), at the east side of the peninsula, the Cheltenham of the Cote d'Azur. It is a summer and winter station, quite husked and wealthy, plenty of splendid palace-villas surrounded by superb gardens. We can say that the name of the village is accurate, indeed. The fact that it is sheltered by vegetation grown slopes, where olive trees feel very well at home and banana trees even bear fruits, makes it the resort with the highest average temperature of the Riviera. It boasts to have some of the best hotels on the Riviera. The Thus the name of “Petite Afrique” is well chosen. Here beach clothes anywhere other than the beach are still rather frowned on , though all this is changing rapidly.
Numerous personalities resided in Beaulieu. Personalities, such as Gustave Eiffel and Gordon Bennett (villa Namouna), the director of the New York Herald Tribune, adored Beaulieu and proposed to build there a yacht port at his own cost, which was refused!! They waited until 1968 to create the enormous marina. Look up the rue Gustave-Eiffel, running over a tiny peninsula, surrounded by the baie des Fourmis, where the glorious “VILLA KERYLOS” dream palace of Theodore Reinach (1860-1928) is located.
Theodore was the youngest of three brothers in a Jewish bankers family of Frankfurt. All brothers were very good and successful and Théodore became archaeologist, papyrus expert, numismatist and musicologist, all directed to old Greece. For instance, he was involved in the French excavations in Delphi (1891), he decrypted old Greek music scores and made a transcription of a newly discovered “Hymn to Apollo”. The French composer Gabriel Fauré wrote even in 1893 music around the hymn. Reinach, being a professor at the Sorbonne in Paris, married (his second marriage) Fanny Kahn, a niece of the in that time famous art collectors Charles and Jules Ephrussi.

Villa Kerylos

Reinach’s life dream was to build a villa which would be an exact copy of one that had existed on the island of Delos in the 2nd century B.C. Reinach worked his plans out with the architect Emmanuel Pontremoli from Nice, a Greek architecture expert. The final cost of the villa turned out to be 9 million gold francs, quite a huge amount for that time. “Kerylos” means “ice bird” or “bird of happiness”, a seabird of good omen. I suppose that those ice-birds were the brothers Charles and Jules Ephrussi. They paid most of the expenses. I don’t want to go in far details about the care Theodore and his architect took in copying all details of the house, as well as the furniture (only noble materials were used: stone, marble, wood, ivory and bronze), as they had seen in Delos (you can get an informative small guide at the entrance of the museum). But I can say that Reinach saw to it that the villa had all modern and comfort devices, but that inevitable utilities as doorknobs and gas-taps were carefully hidden.

Villa Kerylos interior

An evident anachronism as Reinach’s Pleyel piano was stored in a pseudo-Greek cupboard. Theodore talked about his “Pleyelos” and had a favourite tune: “Hymn to Apollo”. Guests were asked to accept to dress a “peplos”, sort of Greek attire and meals were taken lying on rest-beds around a low table. History doesn’t tell if king Gustave V of Sweden (as we see he visited everybody!!), king George of Greece and the always present Leopold II, king of Belgium were also asked to dress in the famous “peplos” and to lie on the floor for dining. Neighbour Eiffel was also interested in the project and let’s not forget Gordon Bennet, also a colourful personage in the noisy and cheerful Riviera of that time.
In his final will Reinach, he married three times and had five children, donated the villa to the “Institut de France”, and it became a museum. Today you can visit the villa with its cool courtyards open to the sky and sea, housing a large collection of mosaics, frescoes, objects dating from the 6th to 1st before J.C. and antique furniture. The PROMENADE MAURICE ROUVIER extends along the sea and follows the coast to St. Jean Cap Ferrat, past villas and hotels with beautiful gardens.

Bibliography:

John Pemble, "the Mediterranean Passion, Victorians and Edwardians in the South", (Oxford University Press 1988), Mary Blume, "Cote d'Azur. Inventing the French Riviera" (Thames and Hudson, London 1982) Stephen Liegeard, "La Cote d'Azur (Ed.Serre, Nice 1988), Guide du Routard 1998-99, Patrick Howarth, “When the Riviera was ours” (Century, London 1977), “History of the Reinach family”, B.Leuchtwanger, (ed. Das Buch, Frankfurt 1977)

From Nice to Saint-Tropez (suite)

Cap d'Antibes

Juan les
Pins-Golfe-Juan-Vallauris

Cannes

Iles de Lerins

La Napoule and Henry Clews

Esterel cornice to Frejus

Frejus

Sainte Maxime to Port Grimaud

Old Grimaud and Cogolin

Saint-Tropez

From Saint Tropez to Cassis

Ramatuelle-Gassin-Croix Valmer-Cavalaire sur mer

Le Lavandou-Bormes les Mimosas