Since the second half of the nineteenth century, Cap-Ferrat on the Cote d’Azur has been a favoured spot for royalty, aristocrats and the rich and famous. Leopold II of Belgium lived in the Villa Les Cédres, which was the most expensive house in the world when it was sold in 2017. Baroness Béatrice de Rothschild built the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild in the 1910s and other notable residents have included Somerset Maugham, Charlie Chaplin, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

The Villa Santo Sospir, which was built in 1930, is a magical place that evokes the glamour of post-war Europe. The villa was bought in 1948 by American millionaire Alec Weisweiller and his French wife Francine. They named it after the ‘sacred sigh’ – the sigh of relief that sailors would breathe on seeing the lighthouse. Stepping inside its gates, you embark upon a unique lesson in art history.

Francine asked her friend Madeleine Castaing to decorate the interior. She applied her own unique style to the house but, as it was a holiday home, many of the walls were left blank and whitewashed and so when Francine invited Jean Cocteau to stay for a week, he had a perfect canvas. His drawings, with their sparing use of colour, make the house utterly remarkable. Cocteau called these drawings ‘tattoos’ as he felt he was painting on the skin of the house rather than decorating its walls. He started by drawing a head of Apollo over the drawing room fireplace and, supported by Picasso and Matisse, continued to decorate the other walls with drawings inspired by Greek mythology. The mural in Francine’s bedroom of Actaeon transformed into a stag after seeing the goddess Diana bathing is quite exceptional.

The house was visited by many of the most glamorous figures of the 1950s, including Picasso, Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo and designers Coco Chanel, Hubert de Givenchy, Christian Dior and Yves Saint Laurent.

After Francine’s death in 2003, her daughter Carole took the villa over but she decided to sell it in 2016 to new owners who are restoring it. As a monument historique, the house is being preserved and will be more fully open to the public; an opportunity for more people to admire this remarkable testament to a vanished lifestyle. Villa Santo Sospir will be available for visits in 2023.