La Californie

Highlights: Église orthodoxe Saint-Michel-Archange · Château Scott · Villa La Californie · Villa Domergue · Boulevard Alexandre-III

East of the Croisette, the hill of La Californie overlooks the bay of Cannes from its terraced gardens. From the mid-nineteenth century, English and Russian aristocrats built villas and "châteaux" here in eclectic styles, drawn by the mild winters and the boundless views out to sea. Having become Cannes's "petite Russie", it remains today one of the city's most sought-after residential neighbourhoods, poised between memory and the art of living.

A pristine hillside offered to the setting sun

Before the mid-nineteenth century, the hill that now borders the boulevard Alexandre-III was no more than a scrubby slope planted with olive trees, set apart from the little fishing port. Everything changed in 1834 when Lord Brougham discovered Cannes and launched the fashion for wintering on the coast; wealthy Englishmen, soon followed by the Russian nobility, then sought out plots of land on the heights, sheltered from the mistral and facing the open sea.

So it was that in 1849 Eugène Tripet, French consul in Moscow, and his wife Alexandra Feodorovna Skrypitzine built the villa Alexandra on the slopes of the hill: the very first holiday residence of what was not yet named La Californie. The couple, who had arrived by chance after a carriage accident in 1848, became the region's finest ambassadors among their Russian connections, setting in motion a movement that would only continue to grow.

English villas and dream "châteaux"

The neighbourhood takes its name from an establishment: the hôtel de la Californie, opened in 1876 on what is now the boulevard du Roi-Albert-Ier, which welcomed an international clientele dazzled by the panorama. In its wake, the hill became covered with sumptuous residences. Between 1868 and 1872, the London architect Thomas Smith raised for a certain Mr Scott the château Scott, an English neo-Gothic silhouette with a square tower and cleverly mismatched volumes, evoking a castle built "piece by piece" across the centuries. These were the years of Cannes's golden age: crowned heads and great European fortunes wintered on the Croisette, while La Californie, more secluded, became the discreet refuge of this society in search of calm, sunshine and views over the bay.

The residence changed hands and became the property of Lord Wolverton, who in 1883 received there none other than William Gladstone, then Prime Minister of Great Britain — a sign of the prestige the hill had already acquired. Around the château Scott, other villas and wooded parks multiplied, gradually shaping this landscape of pines, palm trees and eclectic façades that is today the neighbourhood's signature.

The petite Russie of the Belle Époque

If the English set the tone, it was the Russians who made La Californie their stronghold, to the point that the people of Cannes soon nicknamed the hill the "petite Russie", echoing the "quartier anglais" of the neighbouring Croix-des-Gardes. The colony, some 150 strong in 1880, exceeded 800 souls at the turn of the century: grand dukes, princesses and diplomats spent the winter here, in villas sometimes modelled on their dachas.

Between 1894 and 1896, this community built the église orthodoxe Saint-Michel-Archange, designed by the architect Louis Nouveau in the tradition of Greek-cross sanctuaries preceded by a bell-tower porch, and generously funded by the Grand Duke Michel Mikhaïlovitch. Consecrated in 1896, it remains, with its golden onion domes rising above the foliage, one of the most moving testimonies to this Russian presence that shaped the soul of the neighbourhood.

The century of Picasso and of change

The twentieth century transformed the tranquil character of the hill. In 1920 the construction of the villa Fénelon was completed, which a certain Pablo Picasso bought in 1955 under the name villa La Californie. The artist set up his studio there, painting the bay of Cannes from his vast picture windows in 1958, before leaving in 1961 when a neighbouring building came to block his view of the sea — an episode that, on its own, sums up the tensions between preservation and urbanisation then running through the hill.

The painter Jean-Gabriel Domergue also settled nearby, in his villa of Art Deco inspiration. Little by little, certain great estates were divided up or converted into upmarket co-ownerships — the château Scott itself became, in the 1960s, a prized residential complex — while other historic villas stood intact against the passage of time, protected by their stone walls and their century-old gardens.

An exceptional address, between memory and gentle living

Today, La Californie ranks among the most sought-after residential neighbourhoods of Cannes. A few minutes' walk from the Croisette and the Palm Beach, it offers what few Riviera addresses still bring together: the calm of a verdant hill, open views over the bay and the îles de Lérins, and an architectural heritage of rare density — Belle Époque villas, Italianate gardens, neo-classical or neo-Gothic façades that recount, at every turn of the street, a century and a half of history, tended with the same care as the lush gardens that enfold it.

To live in La Californie is to inhabit a place where history has never stood still: that of the first winter visitors, the grand dukes and the painters continues to converse with the contemporary residences that today slip in among the pines. A neighbourhood of character, in the truest sense, where every dwelling still bears the trace of those who were the first to choose this hill to watch the sun set over the bay of Cannes.