Villa Nellcôte (often referred to as Nellcôte) is a 16-room mansion built during the

Belle Époque The Belle Époque () or La Belle Époque () was a period of French and European history that began after the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 and continued until the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Occurring during the era of the Fr ...

on a headland above the sea at Villefranche-sur-Mer on the Côte d'Azur in

Southern France Southern France, also known as the south of France or colloquially in French as , is a geographical area consisting of the regions of France that border the Atlantic Ocean south of the Marais Poitevin,Louis Papy, ''Le midi atlantique'', Atlas e ...

. Among rock music fans, it is known as the recording location of the 1972 album '' Exile on Main St.'' by the English band the Rolling Stones.

History

In the late 1890s, a former banker, Eugene Thomas, built the imposing villa fronted with marble Ionic columns. Originally it bore the name of Château Amicitia. In 1919, the villa, since renamed Villa Nellcôte, was acquired by the Bordes family, famous shipowners specialising in the transport of sodium nitrate between

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in western South America. It is the southernmost country in the world and the closest to Antarctica, stretching along a narrow strip of land between the Andes, Andes Mountains and the Paci ...

and France. The Villa Nellcôte was leased from April 1971 to October 1973 by Keith Richards, guitarist of the Rolling Stones. Recording sessions for the band's critically acclaimed 1972 album '' Exile on Main St.'' took place in its basement. Richards lived in the house only until late August 1971, after which he left France due to legal problems. In October 1973, a court in Nice imposed a one-year suspended sentence and a 5,000 franc fine on Richards for trafficking cannabis, and banned him from entering France for two years. Richards claimed that during the

Nazi Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...

occupation of France in the early 1940s, Villa Nellcôte had served as the headquarters of the local

Gestapo The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...

, with the floor vents in the basement reportedly being decorated with

swastika The swastika (卐 or 卍, ) is a symbol used in various Eurasian religions and cultures, as well as a few Indigenous peoples of Africa, African and Indigenous peoples of the Americas, American cultures. In the Western world, it is widely rec ...

s. However, this story is almost certainly false. The swastika was a common motif in Belle Époque designs. The Germans were not in the south of France long enough. From June 1940 to September 1943, Villefranche-sur-Mer was under first Vichy French, then under Fascist Italian control. The Nazi occupation began only after that — and they left again in August 1944. With the war turning against them and an invasion expected on the Côte d'Azur, it seems unlikely that the Germans would have spent those 11 months getting local foundries to make custom cast-iron ventilation grates adorned with a swastika motif. Nor is there any record of a Gestapo HQ in Villefranche-sur-Mer. It is presently owned by a Russian national, who purchased it for 100 million euros ($128 million) in 2005. While the house is not visible from the street, it can be seen from the water.

Notes

{{The Rolling Stones Houses completed in 1899 French Riviera Houses in Alpes-Maritimes Villas in France 1899 establishments in France Belle Époque