Storie incredibili dietro le celebrità che hanno fatto la Riviera

Lo spettacolo di ricchezza sulla Costa Azzurra è assolutamente abbagliante, dal supercar quella crociera lungo la Croisette fino al immensi superyacht che si radunano al largo. Eppure è la storia delle celebrità che luccica davvero sulla Costa Azzurra, con ogni location che trabocca di eredità cinematografica: il palazzo dove Grace Kelly incontrò il Principe Ranieri durante il Festival di Cannes; la spiaggia dove Brigitte Bardot saltellava nel suo minuscolo bikini durante le ripreseE Dio creò la donna. Il casinò in cui James Bond giocava a BaccaratGoldenEye, e il strada mozzafiato della Corniche che Carey Grant e Grace Kelly sono arrivate in macchinaCatturare un ladro, e che Grace Kelly in seguito morì.

The star-power of the South of France is almost palpable, and each year it is added to, with silver screen legends walking the Cannes red carpet to a riot of flashing paparazzi bulbs, pop stars lounging on their yachts offshore under buzzing helicopters, and tech billionaires throwing spectacular, jaw-dropping parties on their superyachts.

Summer on the French Riviera is the epicenter of the world’s celebrity vacation scene.

La storia delle celebrità del Riviera francese reads like a Who’s-Who of the last century. It is a riveting story of butcher kings and widow queens, sex sirens and princesses, scheming billionaires and socialite visionaries, hard-drinking writers and eccentric artists —all flocking to the Riviera to live lives full of decadence, intrigue, and debauchery under the Mediterranean sun.

È impossibile sopravvalutare l'impatto che alcuni personaggi chiave hanno avuto sull'ascesa fulminea della Costa Azzurra, trasformandola da un sonnolento luogo del XIX secolo di villaggi medievali e allevamenti di pecore rocciose nella destinazione finale delle celebrità e il luogo di nascita dell'industria dei superyacht .

Lascia che ti accompagniamo in un viaggio lungo la Costa Azzurra, fermandoti nei luoghi di ritrovo di celebrità, socialite e reali che hanno cambiato per sempre la Costa Azzurra.

The Lord Who Put Cannes on the Map

In the winter of 1834, a six-horse carriage arrived in Cannes. On board: the impressive and world-famous Grand Chancellor Henry Brougham, and his sick daughter Eléonore-Louise. They were heading to Italy where they hoped to cure her respiratory ailments (at the time, they didn’t know what the cause of ‘consumption’ was: tuberculosis). But the carriage was forced to stop, and Brougham was warned that they would not be able to enter Italy. An outbreak of cholera meant his route was blocked and he had to wait in Cannes for the quarantine order to be lifted.

They rented a room in the ‘Auberge Pinchinat’ — the only inn in town. Situated on the apex of the bay, looking out to the Îles de Lérins, sheltered by high ground to the west, north and south, Cannes was then a fishing-village called Le Suquet, with no more than three hundred inhabitants and two streets of very humble Provençal houses.

In the days that followed, Brougham fell in love with this small port at the foot of the Suquet tower. He toured the area, and the red rock of the Esterel captivated his heart. He was hooked. “In this enchanted atmosphere, it is a delight for me who loves dreams, to forget for a few moments the ugliness and miseries of life”, he wrote to a friend who remained in London. One day, two days, and then more… While discovering the surroundings, Brougham imagined the life he and his daughter could have if they settled there. 

Then, in a phenomenon that repeated itself to the extent that it became a critical factor in the development of the coast, Lord Brougham himself became an attraction. Brougham was one of the most well-known –and fascinating– celebrities of the time, and it wasn’t long before other intellectuals started visiting him on the French Riviera.

His enthusiasm for Cannes and its mild winters attracted the wealthy and powerful from across Europe. They, too, built spacious villas. His patronage of the town made it the talk of Europe; royalty and aristocrats from Queen Victoria to the Tsar of Russia made a point of holidaying there, and the town took full advantage of its newfound fame. As this word-of-mouth marketing spread, hotels were built. Gradually, the fishing village passed into history, and the glamorous Cannes as we know it was born.

Here’s the full story of who Lord Brougham was and how he influenced the development of Cannes.

A Widow Queen, a Prime Minister & Coco Chanel

La gloriosamente graziosa cittadina balneare diMenton may well be lesser known than its Riviera neighbors, but it was at Menton that the French Riviera as we know it truly began, when the widowed Queen Victoria came to stay in 1882, thus opening the floodgates for royals and high society to follow. Railways were built, grand villas replaced stone farmhouses, and ornate carriages carrying dukes and princes passed slowly along high coast roads above the sparkling sea.

La regina Vittoria rimase incantata dal 'soleggiato, fiorito, sud' come lo chiamava lei, e tornò 8 volte, lanciando fiori a La battaglia dei fiori di Nizza, riding on donkeys up narrow medieval roads, and admiring the ‘very picturesque’ local shepherds, some of whom she said ‘are very handsome boys’. Her maidservant, observing the elderly Queen’s behavior on her visits, remarked that while on the French Riviera “she enjoys everything as if she was 17 instead of 72”.

Alcuni attribuiscono all'amore della regina per il sud della Francia il miglioramento delle relazioni tra i nemici di lunga data Inghilterra e Francia all'inizio del secolo, un rapporto di ammorbidimento che si sarebbe trasformato nella loro alleanza della prima guerra mondiale.

L'alleato della regina, il primo ministro Winston Churchill trascorse diversi periodi della sua vita in Costa Azzurra. Lui e sua moglie hanno particolarmente apprezzato la Villa La Pausa di Roquebrune-Cap-Martin. The Villa was built by Coco Chanel and the Duke of Westminster and sold to multimillionaire Emery Reves, who was a friend of Churchill’s. Villa La Pausa was frequented by so many elites that their stays often coincided, resulting in gossip and anecdotes that spread worldwide. Famous guests included the Prince of Monaco and Grace Kelly, the Dukes of Windsor, Coco Chanel, Clark Gable, Greta Garbo, Wendy Russell, and Somerset Maugham, among (many) others.

Impara di più riguardo the history of the Queen’s time on the French Riviera and how it led to the area becoming an international tourism destination.

Cap Ferrat’s ‘Butcher’ & the ‘Lizard of Oz’

The Queen may have given the Cote d’Azur her royal seal of approval, but it was her cousin, King Leopold of Belgium, who began the transformation of the coast in the late 19th century when he began buying up land and villas on Cap Ferrat. A regular visitor of the French Riviera, he acquired the Villa les Cédres in Cap Ferrat and Villa La Leopolda in Villefranche-Sur-Mer, among others.

Unlike his moralistic cousin, King Leopold II was a cruel and immoral man, famous for his reign of terror over Congo during which he earned the name ‘The Butcher of Congo’. Leopold’s behavior in Cap Ferrat was also fairly scandalous with a secret relationship with a 16 year old prostitute who he kept trapped in a villa on Cap Ferrat and married only five days before his death.

Eppure ha trasformato Cap Ferrat in un luogo di splendide ville e giardini esotici, e il suo yachtClementinawas the first of so very many to anchor off this stunning emerald headland dropping away into the blue-green sea. Leopold turned Cap Ferrat into a wealthy playground, leading the Rothschilds (who built the fabulous Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild) and the great families of Europe to follow.

Ecco la storia completa about King Leopold, his mistress, and their villas.

The writer Somerset Maugham was another notable fellow to take up residence on Cap Ferrat, inviting Picasso, Kipling, Churchill, T.S Eliot, Ian Fleming, and many more to visit him for grand villa parties in the gardens and sunny days by the pool. It’s hard to know why they accepted, given that Maugham was notorious for writing rather nasty, thinly veiled descriptions of his friends and acquaintances in his books. But come, they did — although not all guests were fans, with Noel Coward calling him ‘The Lizard of Oz’, and Virginia Woolf likening him to ‘a dead man’.

Antibes’ Glittering Parties and Madness Under the Pines

Antibes è famoso soprattutto per Picasso, che visse e lavorò nella torre Grimaldi che oggi ospita il Museo Picasso. Ma in verità, la storia delle celebrità di Antibes va molto, molto più in profondità di così, perché fu a Cap d'Antibes negli anni '20 che la Costa Azzurra divenne la destinazione estiva che conosciamo oggi.

Normally, high society deserted the French Riviera in the hot summer months, with grand hotels like the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc shuttering their doors from May to September. That is, until the Murphy’s, a wealthy socialite couple from New York, convinced the proprietor of Eden-Roc to stay open through one summer, beginning a trend which would forever change the way the wealthy enjoyed the Riviera.

They renovated a villa nearby, naming it Villa America , and cleared the pretty Plage de la Garoupe of seaweed, fishing line, and rocks. They then invited Picasso, Hemingway and an ultra-fashionable crowd for summers of sunbathing and swimming, picnics on the Cannes Islands, and glittering parties under the pines.

Their friend, F.Scott Fitzgerald’s Tenera è la notte is an amalgam of the sensuous and beautiful life of the Murphys on the Riviera and his own spiraling marriage problems. In 1925, he wrote Il grande Gatsby, il suo romanzo più famoso, dopo averci soggiornato San Raffaele on the French Riviera. His wife Zelda Fitzgerald and he were regular clients of the Monte-Carlo Casino and several hotels and rental villas in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, Cannes, Nice and Juan-les-Pins.

It would not end well for the four of them in real life, with the Murphy’s losing two of their teenage sons and most of their money, Scott losing his sobriety and writing brilliance, and Zelda losing her sanity and eventually dying in a sanatorium fire. But for a while, life was magical on the Cap d’Antibes, as they dined and drank in the garden, lazed about on the beach, and traversed the coast in their 100-foot sailboat.

Ecco la storia completa about the Murphys, the Fitzgeralds, and the birth of summers and sunbathing on the French Riviera.

Monaco’s Prince his Screen Goddess

È difficile immaginare, guardando Monaco ora, che questa magnifica città sulla scogliera di opulenti casinò e grandi hotel fosse sull'orlo della rovina finanziaria negli anni '50 e avesse poca influenza o fama sulla scena mondiale. (Tranne, cioè, per la sua reputazione di lunga data di "un luogo soleggiato per gente losca", come lo definì una volta il notoriamente caustico Somerset Maugham.)

That all began to change when screen goddess Grace Kelly met with the Prince at the palace during the 1955 Cannes Film Festival, and married in 1956. The glamorous marriage succeeded in reinvigorating Monaco’s fortunes as intended. Sadly, Princess Grace was killed in a car crash in 1982, driving on the same high, beautiful Corniche strada lungo la costa che ha viaggiato con Cary Grant in "Caccia al ladro" di Hitchcock, quando era l'attrice più famosa del mondo.

Da quel momento, molte celebrità dello sport e dell'industria hanno scelto Monaco come base. Forse nessuno così noto come Karl Lagerfeld, riconosciuto a livello internazionale, che desiderava pace e tranquillità, e si vedeva nel luogo che aveva scelto di chiamare casa. Vero amante di Monaco, si è innamorato della bellezza di La Vigie, una delle ville più belle e prestigiose della Costa Azzurra, nota per la sua architettura unica. La casa è stata la sua residenza per oltre dieci anni, permettendogli di offrire una perfetta privacy agli illustri amici che desiderava intrattenere.

Impara di più riguardo la storia della famiglia reale di Monaco, and the true story behind Grace Kelly and the Prince’s marriage.

St. Tropez & The Teen Sex Siren

In 1956, a young, relatively unknown sex siren called Brigitte Bardot cavorted on Pampelonne Beach in a skimpy bikini while filming E Dio creò le donne—the story of an astonishingly beautiful 18-year-old orphan who seduces the men of the village. Saint Tropez and Brigitte Bardot would be forever changed by the movie, which catapulted both the town and actress to global stardom.

Naturalmente Bardot non fu il primo a notare lo straordinario fascino di Saint Tropez; grandi artisti come Signac e Matisse si erano innamorati del sonnolento villaggio di pescatori dai colori pastello molti anni prima, catturandone la luce straordinaria e il grazioso porto nei loro capolavori. Eppure Bardot è stato colui che ha dato il nome al villaggio come destinazione affascinante e libertina di feste di celebrità, bagni di sole in topless e lunghe giornate di mare spruzzate di champagne.

È anche responsabile della nascita del beach club più famoso di tutti, il Club 55, quando, durante le riprese, il marito regista Vadim ha scambiato una baracca sulla spiaggia per un caffè e ha mandato Bardot a comprare del cibo per la troupe cinematografica. Il marito e la moglie proprietari della baracca hanno gentilmente accettato di cucinare loro del cibo, e così è nato il Club 55.

Impara al riguardo Brigitte Bardot e lo scandalo che ha reso famosa St Tropez.

More Stories

There are many more stories about celebrities spending time on the French Riviera, and each promoted the region through their presence and the resulting press coverage.

In the 1970’s, The Rolling Stones rented a villa in Villefranche-sur-Mer, and brought with them a constant flow of celebrities and musicians, including stars like John Lennon. Here’s the full, scandalous story that includes Nazi’s, copious amounts of drugs, and theft, and an arrest.

The French Riviera has a magic about it, as if all those glittering parties and illicit nights have somehow soaked into the very air of the place. Discover up this storied, magnificent coastline —from Queen Victoria’s Menton to Grace Kelly’s Monaco, and from the Murphy’s Cap d’Antibes down to Bardot’s St Tropez— through Iconic Riviera’s guides.