LOOK INSIDE THE MOST EXPENSIVE HOUSEON EARTH

An exclusive tour of Villa Les Cèdres, a 187 year old mansion now for sale along the coast of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat

The south of France has been home to a revolving door of the super-rich for the past century. As their fates rose, industrialists, princes and bankers built palaces along the Mediterranean, and as they fell - first the Russian aristocracy, Americans after the 1929 stock market crash, then much of the European upper class after World War II - they sold them to the world’s next crop of newly wealthy.

Now the owner of Villa Les Cèdres, a 187 year old, 18,000sq ft, 14 bedroom mansion set on 35 acres, hopes that its property will be the next to pass from old money to new. With a list price of US$410mn, the owner, the Italian distiller Davide Campari-Milano Spa, is betting that the house’s combination of history, luxury, and a prime location along the coast of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat will be enough to make it the most expensive residential sale in history.

Les Cèdres was built in 1830 and bought in 1850 by the mayor of Villefranche-sur-Mer, when it operated as an olive tree farm. (There are olive trees more than 300 years old on the grounds.) The mayor’s descendants sold the property to the Belgian King Leopold II in 1904, who, made stupendously rich by his exploitation of mineral resources and rubber trees in the Congo Free State (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), expanded the gardens that still surround the home.

The gates of the villa open to a long, winding path, flanked by towering palms and the cedar trees that give the house its name. A bronze statue of Athena, draped with a marble tunic, stands guard at the front entrance. Inside, the vibe is decadent and slightly weathered, consistent with the estate’s Belle Epoque heyday: Grand sitting rooms, chandeliers, French doors, and floor-to-ceiling 19th century portraits in ornate frames. A woodpanelled library holds 3,000 books on flora and naturalism, including a 1640 edition of a botanical codex worth several hundred thousand euros. In 1924, 15 years after Leopold’s death, Villa Les Cèdres was acquired by the Marnier-Lapostolle family. For 80 years the family cultivated the exotic plants that fill the grounds.

According to chief gardener and conservationist Marc Teissier, it was in the orchards near the home that the family harvested bigarades, the bitter oranges used to flavour Grand Marnier.

Les Cèdres remained in the Marnier-Lapostolle family until 2016, when Campari acquired Société des Produits Marnier Lapostolle (SPML). Confronted with a piece of property that could be worth 20 per cent of its gross 2016 sales, Campari almost immediately put the mansion on the market through the real estate agent Savills.

It’s listed price is aspirational but the number comes primarily from the amount of land and the size of the home relative to its location.

A sitting room on the ground floor provides a reminder of the home’s former owners, especially King Leopold II, whose blue-and-gold sigil is mounted on one of the silk-covered walls. Portraits of his infamous mistress, Blanche Delacroix, a former...

The exterior’s light salmon-and-sand colour is influenced by the style of the Kingdom of Sardinia, which ruled Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat until 1860. The high vantage point of the rooftop offers panoramic views of Villefranche-sur-Mer, the viaduct bridge...

An upstairs bedroom. The home’s old-fashioned interiors will likely be gutted and redone by a new owner - that’s not what they’re paying a premium for. “It’s a very unique property, but not well-known, as you can’t see the villa from any of the nearby...

Among the features unique to the 35 acre property are the 14,000 plant species in its gardens. Teissier, the chief gardener, estimates that a third of them are scattered in the open garden; the other two-thirds are housed in the estate’s 25 greenhouses

The grounds are considered among the top ten botanical gardens worldwide, but unlike others, these are private, competing with those owned by towns and universities.