A villa exceeding a billion euros ?
18 November 2016
Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat
has always attracted big fortunes, celebrities and crowned heads of
the world. From Winston Churchill to Eduardo Saverin, the co-founder
of Facebook, from the former King of Belgium Leopold II to the
Ferrero family, owner of the eponymous agri-food group, the most
famous representatives of the international gotha settled
there.
After the villa Leopolda in Villefranche, it is a
property located on the peninsula of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat which
maddening the market of the french riviera luxury real estate.
A
billion euros is therefore the price mentioned for the property "Les
Cèdres" which for a few months belongs to the Italian group
Campari following the acquisition of Grand Marnier, the villa having
passed in 1976 from the hands of the Marnier-Lapostolle family To
those of the Société des Produits Marnier-Lapostolle.
Built
in the 1830s under the name "Villa Les Oiseaux", the
property was acquired by David-Désiré Pollonais in 1850. In 1904
its heirs sold it as well as its fourteen hectares of gardens to the
King of Belgium Leopold II to lodge Blanche "Caroline"
Delacroix.
The villa was then bought in 1924 by the owner of
the liqueur "Grand Marnier" and the vineyard of Château de
Sancerre, Alexandre Marnier-Lapostolle. Many works were undertaken,
including the creation of an exotic garden with twenty-five heated
greenhouses housing twenty thousand species, including fourteen
thousand tropical trees, considered one of the most beautiful private
gardens in Europe.
From Charlie Chaplin to Elizabeth Taylor,
many were the distinguished guests during the years in which the
property was regularly modernized.
It now has ten rooms, a
ballroom, a concierge, an olympic swimming pool dug out of the rock,
a winter garden, a stable that can accommodate thirty horses and even
a chapel.
Far from the exaggeration of certain neighboring
estates, it is the fourteen hectares of its sumptuous botanical park,
maintained by fifteen gardeners employed full time, propel this
property to the top of the world real estate market.