AMB Cote d'Azur

Charlotte-Béatrice (1864-1934), the daughter of Baron Alphonse de Rothschild, grew up in Château de Ferrière, an enormous mansion with vaste woodlands about 26 kms east of Paris. During her childhood she was surrounded by her father's fabulous and massive art collection and most certainly inherited her father's trait as an avid collector.

When she was 19, the family moved to Provence and it was there that she discovered her two passions in life. The first was Maurice Ephrussi, a banker, whom she married in 1883, and the second was architecture.

In 1905 she found and bought a plot of terraced land on Cap-Ferrat, some 7 hectares in all, where she decided to build her dream home. In order to achieve a flat garden and spectacular views across the Bay of Beaulieu and Villefranche harbour, she had most of the hill dynamited. It is said that rocks removed from this work went to enlarge the port of St Jean. In fact so much land was laid bare that it became necessary to haul in numerous cartloads of topsoil to enable the planting of the diversity of plants Charlotte-Béatrice had set her heart on.

She was extremely hard to please and when not satisfied with any building work, would have it pulled down and redone. Such was her exacting nature that she went through nine consecutive architects (some reports say it was as many as fifteen). The villa was finally finished in 1912.

She called it “Ile de France”, a reference to the steamship upon which she enjoyed numerous cruises. Today it is better known as Villa Ephrussi de Rotheschild. In fact the property was much designed along the lines of a ship with the front of the villa having a large stretch of land suggesting a gigantic bridge. Slightly eccentric, whenever she walked out onto her balcony or showed guests around her garden, she'd have six of her gardeners dressed up as sailors . . .