The guide · by Metro Mode
Roquebrune-Cap-Martin
A medieval village round its keep, and a cape of pines where Le Corbusier summered
Roquebrune takes its name from the brown rock of its old village – Ròcabruna in Occitan. The village is stacked round a keep at 225 metres, in a cirque of mountains under Mont Agel, and the commune falls across all three corniches to the sea. Its castle was raised at the end of the tenth century by Conrad I, Count of Ventimiglia; from the Vento family it passed in 1355 to the Grimaldi, who held it for five centuries.
Like Menton, Roquebrune declared itself a free city in 1848 and became French in 1861; the commune took its present name in 1913. Below the village, the railway made the cape a winter resort: the Grand Hôtel du Cap-Martin opened in 1890, and Empress Elisabeth of Austria spent months there between 1894 and 1897.
Read on
Three quarters make up the commune: the old village, the Cap Martin, with the town hall and the Parc des Oliviers, and Carnolès to the east, on the edge of Menton. On the cape's western shore stand Eileen Gray's villa E-1027 and Le Corbusier's cabanon; he drowned off the rocks on 27 August 1965 and is buried in the village cemetery.
Highlights
- MuseumVilla E-1027Eileen Gray's modernist seaside house of 1926–1929, restored and open for visits
- CastleChâteau des GrimaldiA keep of the late tenth century over the village, held by the Grimaldi for centuries
- BuildingGrand Hôtel du Cap-MartinHans-Georg Tersling's hotel of 1890, where Empress Elisabeth of Austria wintered
- Listed buildingCabanon de vacancesLe Corbusier's cabanon of 1952, his only holiday house, beside the Étoile de Mer
- SightOlivier Millénaire de Roquebrune-Cap-MartinAn olive tree thought to be more than 2,000 years old, the oldest tree in France
- HotelMonte Carlo Beach HotelRoger Seassal's 1929 beach hotel, on French soil 500 metres from Monaco
- RestaurantElsaThe restaurant of the Monte-Carlo Beach, by the water on the French side
Five-star hotels
Hôtel Monte Carlo Beach40 roomsPhoto: Alexander Migl / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Hôtel the Maybourne Riviera65 roomsPhoto: Fulvio Spada from Torino, Italy / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
Lists & itineraries
Everything, by kind
Sources
- Wikipédia (fr) : Roquebrune-Cap-Martin
- Wikipédia (fr) : Château de Roquebrune
- Wikipedia (en): Menton
- Wikipédia (fr) : Villa E-1027
- OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL)
- Wikidata
- INSEE IRIS / IGN (Licence Ouverte 2.0)