Mandelieu-la-Napoule

Highlights: Château de La Napoule · Massif de l'Estérel · Embouchure de la Siagne · Port La Napoule · Cannes-Marina · Route du mimosa · Golfs de Mandelieu

Between the red rocks of the Estérel and the mouth of the Siagne, Mandelieu-la-Napoule has unfolded, since Antiquity, a history of passages and refuges. A Roman outpost, a medieval fief of the Villeneuve, the workshop of an American sculptor enamoured of chimeras, then the capital of a flower brought from Australia: the commune has always known how to turn encounters into identity. Today, amid beaches, harbours and the scents of winter, it cultivates an art of living where history is breathed in as much as it is told.

From Roman origins to the fief of the Villeneuve

The very name of Mandelieu carries the memory of its origins: the Romans already designated this crossroads at the outlet of the Siagne under forms close to "Mandolocum", evoking a place of command watching over a vast territory between sea and massif. The site, sheltered by the Estérel and open to the Mediterranean, drew very early the covetousness of those who controlled the coastal roads. Around the year 400, Eucher, lord of this domain before becoming bishop of Lyon, took part in the founding of the abbaye de Lérins, close by: an early sign of the spiritual and political influence of this pivotal land.

History turned in 1347: after the destruction of the château d'Avignonet by the troops of Raymond de Turenne, the Villeneuve family had a new fortress built upon the rock that overlooks the bay. This nest of stone, turned towards the open sea to watch over the waters and the Barbary pirates, gave rise to the village of La Napoule and became, for centuries, the defensive heart of the bay.

The château, from ruins to a total work of art

Reshaped over the centuries, the fortress gradually lost its martial purpose. In the nineteenth century, it met a more prosaic fate: its walls housed for a time a glassworks, while the medieval keep slowly fell into ruin, forgotten by the picture postcards already celebrating the nascent Côte d'Azur.

In 1918, the story of the château took an unexpected turn. The American sculptor Henry Clews Jr. and his wife Marie bought the remains and settled there, fleeing a Europe at war to build, stone by stone, a world in their own image. Gargoyles, whimsical turrets and a sculpted bestiary overran the ramparts; above the entrance, Henry had a motto carved that summed up his endeavour: "Once Upon a Time". Thus the couple fashioned, between dream and craftsmanship, one of the most singular neo-medieval ensembles on the Riviera.

Once Upon a TimeHenry Clews, motto carved above the entrance of the château de La Napoule

A story of love and fidelity

Henry Clews died at the château in 1937; his funeral procession, it is said, gathered almost the entire village, so deeply had the American artist grown attached to this land of adoption. During the Occupation, as German troops took over the premises, Marie Clews remained on site, watching over her husband's memory and over the gardens she continued to design, blending French formal layouts with the inspirations of the English landscape garden.

In 1951, she created the foundation that bears their name, in order to preserve the château and to perpetuate an artistic calling within it. This posthumous fidelity transformed the fortress of the Villeneuve into a place open to artists, to visitors and, to this day, to the weddings and concerts that bring its seaside gardens to life.

From mimosa to marinas, the birth of a resort

As early as 1830, growers from Mandelieu, Pégomas and Tanneron began to plant this mimosa brought from Australia, introduced to the Côte d'Azur by British residents of the nineteenth century. The flower found in the massif du Tanneron a favourable soil and gradually gained the hills, until, through generations of nurserymen, it made the commune the winter capital of the mimosa. The tramway linking Cannes to Mandelieu from 1910 accompanied this rise and opened the winter season to the first health-seekers of the Riviera.

On 16 February 1931, the first mimosa festival brought together flower-decked floats and processions through the streets of the village, inaugurating a tradition that is still very much alive. Mandelieu and La Napoule, long linked and then at times separated through successive administrative divisions, officially merged in 1970 to form the present-day commune, while marinas and golf courses developed that would shape the contemporary face of the territory.

Yet the taste for the open sea and wide spaces was nothing new: as early as 1891, the grand-duc Michel de Russie, won over by the Old Course of St Andrews, had laid out at Mandelieu what would become the fourth-oldest golf course in France. A century later, marinas and new golf courses have carried on this sporting and worldly vocation, without ever disowning the pioneering spirit of its origins.

Today, an art of living between sea and massif

Mandelieu-la-Napoule has managed to keep, a stone's throw from Cannes, an identity of its own: that of a resort where the red of the Estérel's rocks answers the blue of the Mediterranean, where the greens of the golf courses stand beside the pontoons of Port La Napoule and Cannes-Marina, where the route du mimosa still perfumes the hills each winter. To live here is to inhabit a territory that has always known how to welcome free spirits, from the American sculptor to today's lovers of sea and nature, in that rare balance between preserved heritage and the gentleness of the present.