Palaces, Villas and Country Houses – France

Located on the rue Monceau, this atmospheric Parisian house-museum contains one of the finest collections of French eighteenth-century decorative art in the world.

These treasures from the age of Louis XV and Louis XVI were assembled by Moise de Camondo (1860-1935), member of the Jewish banking family originally based in Constantinople. In 1914 the architect René Sergent completed the Camondo mansion, mixing a historic design derived from the Petit Trianon of Versailles with the latest comforts of the Belle Epoque. Following the death of his son Nissim in combat in 1917, the devastated Moise de Camondo decided to bequeath his house and collections to the French state in 1924, bearing his son’s name as an enduring memorial. During the Second World War, his daughter Béatrice (1894-1945), her husband Léon Reinach and their two children, Fanny and Bertrand, were deported to Auschwitz, never to return. Today the museum commemorates both the elegant arts of the Ancien Régime and the tragedy of the Shoah.

The daughter of baron Alphonse de Rothschild, and his English wife Leonora, and briefly married to the Parisian banker of Russian origin Maurice Ephrussi, Béatrice Ephrussi de Rothschild (1864-1934) made her home on the French Riviera a centre for cosmopolitan entertaining.

Her Villa at Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat was designed by the French architect Aaron Messiah, and constructed between 1905 and 1912. Through the advice of the art dealers she befriended, and profiting from her love of travel, Béatrice de Rothschild filled the rooms and private apartments of the Villa with her eclectic collections of art and furniture.

Combining elements from eighteenth-century France and Italy into a harmonious ensemble, the Villa reveals how Béatrice put her own twist on Rothschild taste, living up to the family motto ‘Ars Patriae Decus’ (Art Honours the Fatherland). The Villa is surrounded by nine magnificent gardens with patios, fountains, ponds, flower beds, shady paths and rare trees.

Champs-sur Marne is primarily a rural residence, a maison de plaisance constructed at the end of Louis XIV’s reign. Each room and work of art celebrates the French art of living – its elegance, beauty, refinement. 

Created at the dawn of the eighteenth century, the château would have died with it, had it not been for a couple passionate about the age of Enlightenment. Louis Cahen d’Anvers and his wife Louise were friends of the Rothschilds and the Camondos.

During the Belle époque, they returned Champs to the magnificent condition visible today. Great collectors, they restored the château with great care, saving the marvellous Christophe Huet panelling and decorating the rooms with pieces crafted by major names in French furniture design. The profusion of dragons and monkeys, porcelain and chinoiserie speaks to the fascination with the Orient during the age of Louis XV, and completes the charm of this exceptionally rich suite of interiors.