To me, one of the most captivating aspects of living on
the Côte d’Azur is that on any given day, practically no matter where
you are, you may be passing one of the most elegant, architecturally
balanced estates with the most intriguing histories imaginable.
Behind
walls, gardens and carefully positioned gates are houses that have
witnessed more than a century of wealth, ambition, romance, politics,
art and celebrity, their histories often largely invisible to the people
walking past them.
One that I have
watched change over the decades, and that now finally feels more settled
in place, is located in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin near Monaco.
Casa
del Mare is strongly defined yet still intriguingly private, tucked
behind the Plage du Buse at the Baie de Roquebrune. It is one of those
properties that can easily be overlooked if you are simply walking along
the coast, yet once you know something of its history, it becomes
almost impossible to look at it in quite the same way again.
Over
a decade ago, walking past the villa from almost any angle, the gardens
surrounding it were not as full or as carefully maintained, offering a
most unique vantage point into the property.
The
newest owners have now altered all of that, and from the upper walking
paths behind the villa, near the Cap-Roquebrune railway station, it is
no longer possible to obtain the same views. From the public beach,
however, there are still some wonderful vantage points.
While
swimming or lounging on the sand, it is still possible to catch
glimpses of the property from days gone by, while being reminded of that
unmistakable feeling that this is truly the French Riviera.
A Villa Born in the Belle Époque
Casa del Mare belongs to a remarkable generation of Riviera villas created during the great transformation of the Côte d’Azur at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries.
The Riviera was becoming an international destination for Britain’s aristocracy, European royalty, industrialists, financiers and wealthy travellers seeking the combination of Mediterranean climate, spectacular scenery and the social opportunities offered by Monte-Carlo, Menton, Cannes and the rapidly developing resort towns.
The railway had fundamentally changed the region. What had once been a relatively remote Mediterranean landscape was becoming accessible to the wealthy of northern Europe, and enormous private estates began appearing along the coastline.
Casa del Mare was very much a product of this extraordinary moment.
The land was acquired by Kate Pawle in 1903, who commissioned the Danish-born architect Hans-Georg Tersling to design the villa. The surviving architectural record provides an unusually precise detail: the property changed hands while construction was still underway. On 26 October 1904, it was purchased by Bessie O’Hagan, who completed the project.
The villa dates from approximately 1904–1905.
Tersling was one of the most important architects working on the Riviera during the Belle Époque. His work can still be found throughout the region, including some of the area’s most celebrated buildings. Among them are the Grand Hôtel du Cap-Martin and Villa Cyrnos, built for the former Empress Eugénie.
Casa del Mare therefore wasn’t simply another large villa commissioned by a wealthy visitor. It was created by one of the architects who helped define the architectural character of the Côte d’Azur itself.
Architecture Designed for the Mediterranean
This was the era when a Riviera villa was not merely a house.
It was an estate.
The gardens, terraces, views, carriage approaches, service areas and relationship with the sea were all part of the experience. The architecture was designed to be approached, entered, experienced and viewed from different points across the property.
That is particularly evident at Casa del Mare. Its position above the Baie de Roquebrune and the Plage du Buse was not incidental. The villa was designed to exploit the Mediterranean landscape while simultaneously creating a private world within it.
And that is perhaps why it remains so captivating more than a century later.
Henry Osborne O’Hagan and the World of British Industrial Wealth
The villa’s first major owner was Henry Osborne O’Hagan, a prominent British industrialist and financier.
O’Hagan was deeply involved in the British cement industry and was one of the figures behind the creation of the Associated Portland Cement Manufacturers in 1900, an enormous industrial consolidation that brought numerous cement companies together.
His presence on the Riviera illustrates something important about the society that created these estates.
The people building enormous villas along Cap Martin were not necessarily hereditary aristocrats. Increasingly they were the new industrial and financial elite whose fortunes had been created by the extraordinary expansion of modern capitalism.
Casa del Mare was therefore a physical expression of a new kind of wealth.
O’Hagan used the villa as a place for entertaining, and it reportedly became a significant social and musical gathering place. Concerts were held for audiences of more than 200 people, with musicians including the pianist Walter Morse Rummel associated with these events.
It is easy to imagine the scene: guests arriving at the great estate, the Mediterranean below them, musicians performing in the villa and gardens filled with the international society that descended upon the Côte d’Azur each winter.
The villa was already becoming much more than a private residence.
It was becoming a stage.
A Brief Afterlife as a Refuge for War Nurses
The history of Casa del Mare also contains a quieter and rather touching episode.
Between November 1918 and April 1919, shortly after the First World War, the villa was reportedly rented by a woman identified as Miss Angas, who used it to provide a holiday for British nurses who had served during the war.
The contrast is striking.
A house created to embody Belle Époque privilege and industrial wealth was, in the aftermath of one of Europe’s most devastating conflicts, being used as a place of rest for women who had spent years caring for wounded soldiers.
It is precisely these unexpected details that make the history of old Riviera estates so compelling. Their stories are not simply about the rich people who owned them.
They are also about the people who passed through them.
Guido Donegani and the Italian Industrial Empire
Following O’Hagan’s death in 1930, Casa del Mare entered another remarkable chapter.
It became associated with Guido Donegani, one of the most powerful industrialists in Italy and the driving force behind Montecatini, one of the country’s great industrial enterprises.
If O’Hagan represented the rise of British industrial capitalism, Donegani represented the emergence of modern Italian industrial power.
But Donegani brought something else to Casa del Mare: an appreciation for extraordinary design.
The villa became connected with the work of Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann, one of the greatest French furniture designers and decorators of the Art Deco period.
Surviving Ruhlmann documentation contains drawings and material relating specifically to Casa del Mare. Furniture, bedrooms, boudoirs, woodwork, fireplaces and upholstery were among the elements involved in the work commissioned for the villa.
This is an extraordinary detail in the property’s history.
Casa del Mare wasn’t simply an architecturally important Belle Époque house. During the Donegani period, its interiors were being transformed with the work of one of the most celebrated designers of twentieth-century France.
The Ruhlmann connection also raises fascinating questions about what remains of those interiors today, where individual pieces may have ended up and whether further documentation could reconstruct the appearance of the villa during the 1930s.
From Industry to Cinema
After the Second World War, the Côte d’Azur was entering another era.
The aristocratic winter season was changing. International tourism was expanding, Cannes was becoming increasingly associated with cinema, and a new generation of actors, producers and artists were making the Riviera their playground.
Casa del Mare followed that transformation.
In 1950, scenes from My Daughter Joy were filmed at the property, with Edward G. Robinson among the stars.
Five years later, another extraordinary chapter began when the villa was acquired by Italian film producer Dino De Laurentiis.
De Laurentiis was one of the great figures of postwar Italian cinema, while his wife, Silvana Mangano, was one of Italy’s most celebrated actresses.
The villa became a retreat for the De Laurentiis family and a gathering place for people from the extraordinary world of Italian cinema.
The great Riviera photographer Edward Quinn photographed the people around Casa del Mare, capturing an extraordinary social world that included figures such as Mangano, Gina Lollobrigida, Federico Fellini and Giulietta Masina.
This was the Riviera of postwar cinema: glamorous, international, slightly decadent and populated by people who would go on to define European film.
Casa del Mare had once been the home of British industrial wealth.
Now it was part of the mythology of Italian cinema.
From Hollywood and Rome to International Finance
The villa subsequently entered another world of wealth through its association with Akram Ojjeh, the Saudi businessman and founder of Techniques d’Avant Garde.
Ojjeh was one of the most prominent Middle Eastern businessmen operating in Europe during the latter decades of the twentieth century. His family would later become closely associated with international business, luxury assets and Formula One through his son Mansour Ojjeh and McLaren.
Once again, Casa del Mare reflected the changing nature of wealth on the Riviera.
The Belle Époque British industrialists had given way to Italian industrialists. The Italian industrialists had given way to international cinema. And now the great Riviera villas were increasingly becoming possessions of a global elite whose fortunes crossed continents.
The villa had survived because the world around it kept changing.
A Word About the Mobutu Story
There is an important distinction to make here because the history of Casa del Mare has become confused with that of another spectacular Tersling villa on Cap Martin.
Villa Del Mare, also known as Villa Maria Irina, is a different property.
That enormous estate is associated with Mobutu Sese Seko, and subsequently with Russian and international business interests. It has been the subject of considerable recent French legal and investigative attention.
The confusion is understandable. Both properties are associated with Hans-Georg Tersling, both date from the same extraordinary period and both have been described at various times using variations of the name “Villa Del Mare.”
But they are not the same house.
For Casa del Mare, the better-established historical sequence runs through Kate Pawle, Bessie O’Hagan and the O’Hagan family, Guido Donegani, Dino De Laurentiis and Silvana Mangano, and subsequently Akram Ojjeh, with some later ownership transfers requiring further archival research.
That distinction is particularly important because it prevents the fascinating history of one villa from being inadvertently combined with the quite different history of another.
A Changing View
For me, however, Casa del Mare’s history is only part of what makes the property fascinating.
There is something particularly compelling about seeing a building evolve over the course of decades while the landscape around it changes.
When I first became familiar with the villa more than a decade ago, the gardens were considerably less dense and less manicured. From the walking paths above the property, particularly around the area of the Cap-Roquebrune railway station, it was possible to obtain glimpses that are now largely gone.
The newer landscaping has restored a considerable degree of privacy. And it’s blatantly obvious to locals that updates have been made throughout the estate since these photos posted were taken.
From above, the villa is now much more concealed.
But the sea has not changed.
From the Plage du Buse there are still places where the house can be glimpsed through the vegetation, and there is something wonderfully appropriate about experiencing it that way.
You can be swimming in the Mediterranean, lying on one of the Riviera’s most beautiful beaches, and looking up to see a glimpse of a villa that has witnessed more than 120 years of history.
You are looking at the same coastline that attracted the British industrialists of the Belle Époque.
The same Mediterranean that looked out over O’Hagan’s parties.
The same landscape that surrounded Donegani’s Ruhlmann interiors.
The same sea that provided the backdrop for De Laurentiis, Mangano and the extraordinary circle of Italian cinema.
And, eventually, the same view that continues to make these properties among the most coveted real estate on the planet.
The Riviera Hidden in Plain Sight
This is what I find most fascinating about living on the Côte d’Azur.
History here is rarely confined to museums.
It is embedded in the landscape.
It is in the villas behind walls, the grand hotels, the railway stations, the old gardens, the staircases descending toward the sea and the buildings that most people pass without ever knowing what happened inside them.
Casa del Mare is a perfect example.
It has survived the collapse of the Belle Époque, two world wars, the transformation of European society, the rise and fall of industrial empires, the golden age of Italian cinema and the arrival of a truly global class of wealth.
Yet it remains there above the Plage du Buse, remarkably poised over the Mediterranean.
The people have changed.
The fortunes have changed.
The fashions have changed.
Even the gardens have changed.
But the villa remains.
And perhaps that is the most captivating aspect of all.
On the Côte d’Azur, you can quite literally walk past history without knowing it is there. Sometimes all it takes is a glimpse through the trees, a view from the beach or a forgotten name on an old photograph to reveal that the elegant house above you has been quietly watching the Riviera change for more than a century.
Side note: Casa del Mare is a private property that is exceptionally well secured and protected from every angle. Please respect the privacy of the property and do not attempt to trespass. The thrill of the property can still be felt just by basking in its presence. The colored images in this article date from both 2011 and 2016.
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