During a zealous but doomed love affair with the Duke of Westminster, French style icon Coco Chanel was gifted a tract of land near Monte Carlo by the Duke himself. It was there that Chanel saw to the building of a luxurious, sophisticated summer villa dubbed La Pausa, right there on the French Riviera.
The seven-bedroom villa is legendary, having welcomed guests such as Igor Stravinsky, Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau, and Pierre Bonnard, before it was purchased by literary agent and art enthusiast Emery Reves in 1953. The list of names doesn’t stop there, as Reves rented the house to Winston Churchill to complete his memoirs in, and entertained Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery and other notable names. Regardless of the fact that so many people have been in and out of the iconic home does nothing to lessen the asking price of $50 million.
Today, the 10,000-square-foot home inhabits almost nine acres of countryside, with views of the Mediterranean and the kind of sumptuous interiors you would expect. Unlike Chanel’s Paris apartment, which will remains just as she left it, this seaside villa has seen the labor of several more designers in the last half-century, and will always be rich part of history.
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