En un regard
Le château en bref
The Château de Gairaut, also known as the Château d'Azur, is a Belle Époque residence built between 1900 and 1904 for Joseph Giordan, a Nice millionaire, on the site of a more modest building dating from 1744, in the Gairaut district of northern Nice. Its architecture, inspired by the French Renaissance with Baroque elements, is distinguished by an octagonal tower, a central atrium covered by a glazed dome and some thirty rooms, including a mahogany dining room shown at the 1900 Exposition Universelle. The ceilings and walls are painted with natural pigments and decorated with frescoes attributed to Jules Chéret and Alfons Mucha; the château also includes a small observatory topped by a glass dome. The estate is surrounded by a terraced botanical garden supported by an imposing retaining wall of dressed stone. Occupied during the Second World War by the German army, which installed an anti-aircraft battery on the roof, the building was gradually neglected after the war, while part of the estate was divided into building plots. Bought in 1987 by the advertising executive Éric Poisson, it underwent a complete restoration before being sold in 2000 to the Russian businessman Sergei Pugachev. The château, a private property, has since been the subject of legal proceedings related to its conservation.