Cap Eden Roc

How the Stage was Set HISTORY IN BRIEF 1889: Opening year. HISTORY IN DETAIL 1863: Construction of the Villa Soleil (Sunshine Villa) at Antibes, a private mansion in the purest Napoléon-III style. The investors behind the project were a group of Antibien businessmen together with an exotic consortium of Russian aristocrats 1870: Villa Soleil was turned into a hotel. The Franco-Prussian War was about to start. 1887, October: Antoine Sella, an enthusiastic and innovative 30 year old from Piedmont, bought the hotel. 1889: Opening of the Grand Hôtel du Cap. Sir Gordon-Bennett, the eccentric and super-rich owner of the « New York Herald », was one of the first guests and mingled at the hotel with English and Russian nobles and princes. 1914: The Eden Roc pavillon was built 400 yards away from the main hotel. Carved out of rocks with electric blue-pink streaks, this fashionable English tearoom with a private pool located was like something out of a fairytale. One commentator said that it was "destined to provide a much-needed resting place for people who had exhausted themselves in the battles of life in less favourable climes".

The guest list of the hotel reads like a Who’s Who, including: From the World of Entertainment Rudolf Valentino Gerald and Sarah Murphy Cole Porter Rita Hayworth Marlène Dietrich Orson Welles Madonna Sharon Stone Tom Cruise Nicole Kidman Bill Cosby Robert de Niro Johnny Depp Catherine Deneuve From the World of Art and Literature Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Ernest Hemingway Picasso From the World of Politics General De Gaulle François Mitterrand George Bush Jacques Chirac The Kennedy family