En un regard
Le château en bref
The Château de la Garoupe is a villa built in 1907 on the Cap d'Antibes, in a vast park, for the British baronet Sir Charles Benjamin Bright McLaren (later Baron Aberconway) and his wife Laura Elisabeth McLaren, Baroness Aberconway. Its design was entrusted to the British architects Ernest George and Alfred Bowman Yeates.
The building consists of a rectangular main block flanked by two symmetrical semicircular projecting wings on its north façade, and an annexe service building. It is topped by hipped roofs covered with flat tiles and has classical porticoes on its north and south façades, the southern one comprising three arches decorated with arcading and sculpted motifs bearing Latin inscriptions. The park, designed by Laura McLaren, notably includes a pergola covered with climbing roses, twelve metres high.
Between the wars, the property welcomed famous guests, including the composer Cole Porter, who rented it in the summer of 1922, and the painter Pablo Picasso. In 1931, it passed to the McLarens' daughter, Priscilla Norman, whose husband Sir Henry Norman enlarged the building by adding an extra storey; a restoration was carried out in 1955, and in 1958 a free-standing tower in the park was enlarged and converted into a pavilion.
Sold in 1999 for around 22 million euros to the Russian businessman Boris Berezovsky, the château was bought in November 2023 by Jan Koum, co-founder of WhatsApp, for a sum of around 65 million euros.
