“I like to tell people that there are many histories behind the Hôtel Belles Rives,” says Marianne Estène-Chauvin, the owner and president of the luxury hotel in Juan-les-Pins. “When F. Scott Fitzgerald spent time here, it was the Villa Saint Louis and the high society of the era holidayed on the Cap d’Antibes…” She gestures behind her, reeling off names of the 1920s A-List such as Hemingway, Picasso, the Murphys, the Valentinos and Cocteau. “The Americans helped found the Côte d’Azur. Then there was the Russian wave of people, like my grandparents.”Read more
Artists and sailors have long found sanctuary in the port of Antibes. For Chris Cook, it was the yachting industry that first brought him here, but art that became his reason to stay.
In line with the recent 70th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival, French publication Paris Match has chosen the legendary Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Antibes as a location to display 25 archived photographs of the festival from now until October.
In the two period films that have premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, it seems clear that the battle of the sexes has never been more alive.
In 1957, the movie And God Created Woman was released, catapulting 23-year-old Brigitte Bardot to international stardom. The film, a tale of a sexually demented ingénue who drives the whole town mad, was based in Saint Tropez. The following year, the Bardot myth and reality overlapped when she bought La Madrague, her home at the edge of the village, and made Saint Tropez her own.
Former General Manager of Reuters and a British expat living in the south of France, Michael Nelson was in the midst of launching his second book - Americans and the Making of the Riviera - when he realised that despite the French Riviera’s global reputation, no one had ever written a history of the region in English.
Dior: it’s a name that everyone knows, even 60 years after the death of its founder. Dior perfumes still sit among some of the world’s most expensive bottles; its breathy advertising is legendary. But did you know that this designer extraordinaire has close ties to Grasse and its surroundings?
“I still believe that the perfect fashion photograph is a photograph that does not look like a fashion photograph. It’s a photograph that looks like something out of a movie, like a portrait, maybe a souvenir shot, maybe a paparazzi shot, anything but a fashion photograph”: Helmut Newton
An intimate classical music festival of international standing, Les Heures Musicales de Biot returns from 17th May to 20th June under the wise guidance of artistic director Liliane Valsecchi. As the life blood of the festival – now in its 34th year – Valsecchi has invited an impressive list of musicians and performers to the hilltop village’s Église Sainte Marie-Madeleine.