A ‘trophy residence’, made from the converted Art Deco ballroom of a former luxury hotel in the French Riviera once visited by Winston Churchill and Coco Chanel, is on sale for £23m.
Villa Zelda is set in what was the Hôtel Provençal in Antibes, Provence, built in the late 1920s by architect Lucien Stable for American millionaire Frank Jay Gould and his wife Florence.
Previous guests to the round, double-height ballroom, which also served as a restaurant, read like a who’s who of the mid-20th century’s beau monde: Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe, Marlene Dietrich, Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, Estee Lauder, Jackie Kennedy and Ella Fitzgerald.
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Charlie Chaplin lived at the hotel from 1931-32, but the villa takes its name from Zelda Fitzgerald, the socialite wife of writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby.
The hotel closed for renovation in 1977 and never reopened. The building, which is one of the tallest and largest landmarks in the town of Juan-les-Pins, close to Antibes, subsequently fell into a state of disrepair. It was acquired by British property developer Cyril Dennis, who devised plans for its redevelopment. But these were shelved when he could no longer service the debt that he had taken on to fund the project.
It lay dormant until it was acquired by Caudwell, the property development firm of British billionaire entrepreneur and philanthropist John Caudwell, in 2014. The developer has now transformed the former hotel into it into the £300m exclusive residential address Le Provençal, providing 35 homes.
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Villa Zelda is arguably the super-prime development’s most-desirable residence – set over two floors, it offers five bedrooms, a cinema, an Art Deco entrance hall, a private terrace, landscaped garden, swimming pool, and a curved staircase into the former ballroom which now serves as a living/dining room. The €27.25m ($31.25m) property even houses its own private lift and staff entrance.
Nearby five-star Hôtel Belles Rives provides residents at Le Provençal with a concierge, lifestyle services, valet parking and privileged reservation at the hotel’s facilities, including a one-star Michelin restaurant, cocktail bar, spa and private beach club.
Caudwell, who is the founder of retail chain Phones4u (which he sold for almost £1.5bn in 2006), set up his eponymous property developer in 2007. The firm is expected to unveil its 1 Mayfair luxury residences in London later this year, with homes costing upwards of £35m.
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Caudwell said: ‘Villa Zelda… combines Art Deco design details, exceptional contemporary living spaces and outstanding heritage since the rotunda was formerly the ballroom/restaurant which entertained royalty, Hollywood stars and famous Prime Ministers.
‘[It] provides a discerning buyer with a totally unique opportunity to acquire an iconic piece of Riviera history that has been transformed by Caudwell into one of the finest trophy residences on the Côte d’Azur.’
To create Le Provençal, Caudwell worked alongside Parisian architecture and interior design house Affine Design, renowned for the renovation of hotels such as the Hôtel de Paris.
Other residences released for sale at Le Provençal include apartments priced from £3.4m (€4.05m or $4.76m) up to £6.8m (€8m or $9.4m), with marquee residences priced from £12.8m (€15 million or $17.62m).
