Musée Île-de-France

Description:

• Built by Baronne Ephrussi, this is one of the Côte d'Azur's most legendary villas. Born a Rothschild, she married a Hungarian banker and friend of her father, M. Ephrussi, about whom even the museum's curator knows little. She died in 1934, leaving the stately Italianate building and its magnificent gardens to the Institut de France on behalf of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. The wealth of her collection is preserved: 18th-century furniture; Tiepolo ceilings; Savonnerie carpets; screens and panels from the Far East; tapestries from Gobelin, Aubusson, and Beauvais; drawings by Fragonard; canvases by Boucher; rare Sèvres porcelain; and more. Covering 12 acres, the gardens contain fragments of statuary from churches, monasteries, and torn-down palaces. One entire section is planted with cacti.

• © Frommer's 2012

Awards:

Frommer's

•  Recommended 2010