The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
Welcome to the ‘Peninsula of Billionaires’
Kate Wickers conjures up the ghosts of 1950s A-listers at the villa-clad Cap-Ferrat
With its windswept coastline, jagged rocks protruding from the sea and steep, pineclad cliffs, Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat – also known as Cap-Ferrat – has a wildness that differs from the rest of the Côte d’Azur. This is a lovely time to visit: the days are warm, the sea temperature a steady 26C, and the restaurants, bars and hotels are taking a breath. After the giddiness of the peak summer holiday months, tranquillity has descended.
I make my way along the paved coastal path – part of nearly nine miles of trails – to Cap-Ferrat’s striking lighthouse, built in 1732, from which I can see Nice. In the other direction lies Monaco. I can see the appeal of the Cap-Ferrat peninsula for the royals, rich and famous who have flocked here since the early 1900s looking to escape the limelight: just under a square mile of pine-forested land bejewelled with opulent villas make it France’s most exclusive holiday destination.
It was King Leopold II of Belgium who first made the place fashionable, when in 1904 he snapped up the region’s grandest house – Villa les Cèdres, built in 1830 – which he embellished with botanical gardens and tunnels that ran to the homes of several of his mistresses. I spy it high up on the cliffs, blushing salmon pink in the midday sun. In 2020 it was bought for a rumoured €200 million (£170 million) by Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s wealthiest person, so no wonder it looks a little embarrassed.
The golden age of lavish house parties began here in the 1920s when Somerset Maugham bought the Moorish-inspired Villa La Mauresque and hosted friends such as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and TS Eliot (although it is said that, when he tired of his houseguests, he bundled them into taxis and sent them to the clubs of Nice and Monaco). In 1967 Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were photographed at Villa La Fiorentina for the cover of Vogue. Homes are so sought after in the area often referred to as the Peninsula of Billionaires that even U2 frontman Bono had to make do with buying further down the coast in the town of Èze-sur-Mer (albeit his purchase was a stunning beachfront terracotta mansion).
Grand-Hôtel du Cap-Ferrat, a Four Seasons hotel, was built in 1908 and has hosted famous faces from Charlie Chaplin to Winston Churchill. In its lightfilled grand salons, aboard the bird-cage lift and on the sweeping steps that lead to the terrace, it’s easy to play my favourite game of conjuring up A-lister ghosts from the past: at La Véranda I imagine myself joined for lunch by Cary Grant, who visited while filming Alfred Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief in 1955.
In my Pinewood Suite – named after the trees that shade an expansive terrace and fill the room with their sharp citrusy scent – the walls are decorated
with uplifting prints by Miro and Matisse, who was entranced by the luminosity of the light found here. In Club Dauphin, the hotel’s swish beach club, opened in 1939, I gaze upon a Côte d’Azur icon: the Olympic-sized saltwater pool where swimming instructor to the stars Pierre Gruneberg gave lessons to Brigitte Bardot.
The club is located at sea level and if you’re feeling lazy there is a funicular to glide you sedately 2,000ft down the cliffside in an air-conditioned glass box. For a wilder swimming experience, I head to the sea and a three-sided natural swimming hole with steps fixed to the rocks. The fun starts when a super yacht glides by and the pool is quickly transformed into a swirling cauldron.
I explore by e-bike (complimentary at the hotel and so handy for tackling the hills) and the roads are quiet, save for the occasional passing of a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud. Attempting a cheeky peek through the fences of the palatial pads, I catch glimpses of elaborate topiary and extravagant swimming pools, but most lie behind fortress walls. However, I get an insight into Cap-Ferrat’s hedonistic heyday in two historic villas that are open to the public (a third, the home of artist, writer, and film-maker Jean Cocteau, is under renovation). Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild was built by heiress Beatrice de Rothschild in 1907 in an extravagant two-fingered gesture to the husband she had recently divorced. She held lavish balls in the grand salons, furnished the villa with rare furniture and objets d’art, and indulged her love of horticulture by creating nine gardens with different themes, from Provençal to Japanese. Musical fountains bring the French garden to life at regular intervals, making it almost impossible not to break into a waltz as you explore.
A little further along the peninsula in Beaulieu-sur-Mer sits Villa Kerylos, the indulgent dream of archaeologist Theodore Reinach, a scholar of Ancient Greece, built in 1902 in the style of his specialist subject. If ever there was an example of living a dream, this is it – complete with beds at table height so he could eat lying down. I have lunch at Paloma Beach, which morphs from
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beach club by day to star-lit restaurant by night and was a favourite with David Niven, who lived for 20 years in nearby Villa Socoglio: a candyflosspink villa on the waterfront that was once owned by Charlie Chaplin.
By contrast, a wander around Villefranche-sur-Mer, which wraps behind Cap Ferrat, feels like a breath of normality. A fortified town with a port lined by attractive belle-époque hotels, it has atmosphere in spades and some unusual tourist attractions. It was here that Cocteau holed up at the Welcome Hotel to kick an opium addiction; as a thank you to the town he fell in love with, he renovated local chapel Saint Pierre. The town by night has a pleasingly shady vibe, largely due to the Rue Obscure: a tunnel-like road built in the 13th century so that soldiers could go about their business undetected, which has since served as a backdrop in more than 120 films, including Cocteau’s The Testament of Orpheus.
I settle down at Dry, a harbour-side bar with views of Cap-Ferrat, and order a bottle of Whispering Angel rosé to watch the sky turn violet as dusk descends. Across the bay, the lighthouse is at work, blinking a swirling light into the night – a reminder that billionaires may come and go, but in the end it’s the place that will endure.