Between Nice and Monaco a wooded peninsula reaches out into the sea — Cap-Ferrat, for a century one of the most coveted addresses on earth. Kings and writers built villas in its pines; Somerset Maugham wrote here, and a Rothschild raised a palace of rose-pink stone above two bays. And yet a public path runs the whole shore, free to anyone.
I. The cape and the coast path
The sentier du littoral rounds the entire peninsula at the water’s edge — past the villas hidden in their gardens, the little Plage de Paloma, the lighthouse at the point, and back to the fishing harbour of Saint-Jean. It is one of the loveliest coastal walks on the Riviera, and it asks nothing but good shoes and a couple of hours.
“The villas are private, but the path along the sea belongs to everyone.”
II. The Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild
On the narrow neck of the cape stands the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild, the rose-pink belle-époque palace Béatrice de Rothschild filled with art and surrounded with nine gardens — French, Spanish, Florentine, Japanese, a garden of stone and a garden of roses — laid out so the whole thing reads, from above, like a ship between two blue bays. The musical fountains play on the hour.
III. The harbour and around
The village of Saint-Jean keeps a real fishing harbour turned gently to pleasure, with restaurants round the quay and the Grand-Hôtel du Cap-Ferrat on the point. Next door, Villefranche-sur-Mer and Beaulieu with its Greek Villa Kérylos complete one of the richest few kilometres of coast in France.
