Villa les Camélias is a Belle Epoque building which bears witness to the prestigious past of Cap d'Ail.
The garden level is dedicated to the unique history of the town.
The floors present an exceptional collection of paintings, drawings and enamels by the Basque painter Ramiro Arrue.
Tales from Cap d'Ail...
On the garden level, the Villa houses items and countless photographs dating from the end of the nineteenth century to the 1950s, which immortalise life for Cap d’Ail’s residents: their pastimes, their celebrations, and scenes from their everyday lives. Alongside the local population with its strong values, the international aristocracy spent their winters here, followed by big names from the worlds of art and literature.
Ramiro Arrue Collection
Ramiro Arrue was prolific: the drawings, paintings, enamels, and documents from his studio’s collection brought together here reveal a silent universe, marked with refinement and majesty. Ramiro Arrue depicted the Basque Country in a figurative style mixed with some of the pictorial techniques of the avant-garde artists he encountered during his studies in 1920s Paris.
The Villa’s Gardens
In the intimate, shaded garden, which has been left to grow more or less wild, discover mature olive trees rubbing shoulders with hundred-year-old carobs, mimosas, a young Ginkgo biloba, Judas trees, bougainvilleas, camellias and fragrant jasmines. Take some time to seek out the irises growing next to the tomatoes, rosebushes blossoming among the salad leaves, acanthus and agapanthus, pelargoniums and potatoes, and many other flowers...
