Coco Chanel's Summer Home on the French Riviera Asks $50M

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

20 IMAGES

During her passionate but ill-fated love affair with the Duke of Westminster, the French fashion icon Coco Chanel was given a parcel of land near Monte Carlo by the Duke for the purposes of constructing this elaborate summer villa, dubbed La Pausa. The eccentric and extravagant Duke was famous for his over-the-top gifts, and once reportedly hid a huge uncut emerald at the bottom of a crate of vegetables, so this generosity was nothing new, but the seven-bedroom villa Chanel built would soon become even more legendary, welcoming the likes of Igor Stravinsky, Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso, and Pierre Bonnard, before it was sold to literary agent and art collector Emery Reves in 1953. But the stream of notable names didn't stop there, as Reves rented the house to Winston Churchill for the purposes of completing his memoirs, and entertained Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, the Duke of Windsor, Noel Coward, Aristotle Onassis, Greta Garbo, Rose Kennedy, Prince Rainier and Princess Grace on this very spot. Today the 10,000-square-foot house occupies almost nine acres of idyllic countryside, with views of the Mediterranean and the sort of worn luxury interiors befitting such a star-studded past. Also, unlike her Paris apartment, which is kept just as Chanel left it, this seaside villa has seen the hand of several more designers in the intervening half century. Still, the wear and tear and modified furnishings have done nothing to temper the asking price, which is said to be in the area of $50M.
· Cap Martin [Sotheby's via CNBC]