The guide · Walk 2 of 5 · easy

La Salis and Bacon

The oldest private holdings on the Cap, and the three finest gates on the peninsula.

8gates

1.3 kmstraight-line between gates – the road is a little longer

29 minat 4.5 km/h, a minute and a half at each gate

Boulevard du Capstart

Cap d’Antibes · VERA’s own boundary8 stops · dots: the other walks

1
Start · Boulevard du Cap · built 1880s
Château Empelparcel confirmed
Boulevard du Cap · Private
One entrance, two households. In 1929 the building was divided between two sisters and each inherited a floor.
What the record saysThe Empel family held it for three generations. When the last owner died in 1929 the house was split vertically between her two daughters — and in 1943 a widower held one floor in usufruct while two nieces bought the house next door in bare ownership.
Directions Photograph the gate
2
+300 m · 300 m in · built 1936
Villa Lilliputparcel confirmed
Avenue Max Maurey · Private — the carved name is on the street wall
Carved into the stone wall on BOTH sides of the entrance: LILLIPVT — with a classical V for the U. Barry Dierks built it in 1936, and Villa The Palm was rebuilt three years later as a copy of it.
What the record saysIts own nameplate and the book disagree about how many Ls the name has. Three spellings are now on record, and the stone carries a fourth-century V where the U should be.
Directions Photograph the gate
3
+232 m · 532 m in · built 1923
Villa Notre Rêveparcel confirmed
Avenue de la Salis · Private — everything described is on the street
The best gate on the Cap. Two pillars with bosses, an elaborate wrought-iron gate between them, HORSESHOES worked into the railings and repeated on the front door, and enamel plaques bordering the gate carrying the villa's name AND the ceramist's. The owner was a regimental blacksmith.
What the record saysThirteen years passed between buying the land in 1910 and building on it in 1923, and the owner never enjoyed it — a divorce left the house to his former wife.
Directions Photograph the gate
4
+300 m · 832 m in · built 1939
Villa The Palmparcel confirmed
Boulevard de Bacon · Private
Georges Milton — the singer Bouboule — bought the house standing here in 1933, demolished it in 1939, and had this one built as a copy of Villa Lilliput, three gates back.
What the record saysThe plot cost 350,000 francs in 1933 with a house already on it. Six years later the house was pulled down. The 1907 villa it replaced was called Les Flots.
Directions Photograph the gate
5
+185 m · 1 km in · built 1880s
Baconparcel confirmed
Impasse Sauvagette · Private
The Jaubert family bought this ground in 1816 to shoot over, and kept it for more than a century. The hunting lodge stood where Villa Marguerite is now, two gates along.
What the record saysIn 1845 the whole property was valued at 12,000 francs and yielded six hundred francs a year in crops. It stayed in one family from 1816 until at least 1936.
Directions Photograph the gate
6
+94 m · 1.1 km in · built after 1909
Villa Margueriteparcel confirmed
Avenue Henri Duvernois · Private
This is the ground the Bacon hunting lodge stood on. A cork merchant from Lyon paid one franc twenty-seven the square metre for it in 1909; the avenue is named after the writer who later bought the house.
What the record saysLand here was a franc twenty-seven the square metre in 1909 — the cheapest figure in the whole book after the bare rock of the Îlette. The garden held a rabbit hutch, a chicken coop and a muscat vine.
Directions Photograph the gate
7
+50 m · 1.2 km in · built 1912–1917
La Sauvagetteparcel confirmed
Impasse Sauvagette · Private
Sold in 1917, built, for ten thousand francs — to a Paris department-store clerk. The book says openly that it cannot explain the price.
What the record saysThe buyer's salary could not have covered it, and the book says so outright. Two years later the house was given to his daughter; after her divorce she kept it.
Directions Photograph the gate
8
+137 m · 1.3 km in · built 1863–1866
Montaigne and Valroseparcel confirmed
Avenue Henri Duvernois · Private
One gate, two villas. Twelve hectares of rock bought in 1863 — the build took three years because the road was impassable and the stone came by sea.
What the record saysThe owner's father had refused Napoleon entry to Antibes in 1815 when the emperor landed at Golfe-Juan. The son named this house after Montaigne, his favourite writer.
Directions Photograph the gate