La Californie – Cannes' hill of Russian domes and royal villas

East of the Croisette, the hill of La Californie is where Cannes's winter aristocracy built its villas – the Russians first, then the British. Today it is the town's most sought-after address, with a tsarist-era church, a royal memorial and a ruined observatory on top.

From the Croisette, look north-east past the Martinez and you see it: a steep green hill scattered with white villas and crowned by a squat tower. This is La Californie – officially the Californie–Pezou quarter – which climbs from the sea to the highest point in Cannes, the Col Saint-Antoine at 260 metres, on the border with Le Cannet and Vallauris.

It is the town's most sought-after residential address: large houses in wooded grounds, many of them hidden behind walls. Most are private, but the hill's story can be read from its streets, its churches and its views.

Little Russia

The quarter takes its name from the Hôtel de la Californie, built in 1876 on what is now the avenue du Roi-Albert-Ier, which drew crowned heads, writers and celebrities from across Europe; the building is now an apartment block. But the first to settle here were Russians. In 1849 Eugène Tripet, a French merchant and consul in Moscow, and his wife Alexandra Skrypitzine built the Villa Alexandra, the first holiday house on the slopes, after a carriage accident had stopped them in Cannes on their way to Rome.

Russian aristocrats wintering in the south followed. While the Croix-des-Gardes on the other side of town, settled by the British gentry, became the “English quarter”, La Californie was nicknamed “little Russia”. The Russian colony numbered about 150 people in 1880 and more than 800 by 1904. The Villa Alexandra was demolished in 1960 to make way for the Alexandra Palace apartments.

Saint-Michel-Archange

The colony's church stands at 40 boulevard Alexandre-III. A committee chaired by Grand Duke Michael Mikhailovich – the archangel Michael was his patron saint – laid the first stone on 23 April 1894. The architect, Louis Nouveau, followed the Orthodox model of a Greek-cross church preceded by a bell-tower porch, built for 400 worshippers under glazed tiles and a single dome. It was consecrated on 22 November 1894; the bell tower, hung with seven bells brought from Russia, was blessed on 17 March 1896.

The church, its presbytery and its park were listed as historic monuments in 2022. Its blue onion dome, scattered with gold stars, rises above eucalyptus and cypress – a piece of imperial Russia on a Provençal hillside.

A memorial to a prince

The British have their monument too. Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, Queen Victoria's youngest son, died at the Villa Nevada in Cannes on 28 March 1884. His brother, the Prince of Wales, led the building of St George's Church in his memory, on land given by the owner of the Hôtel de la Californie. Designed by Arthur Blomfield in English Gothic, it was consecrated on 12 February 1887 in the presence of the Prince of Wales, and Queen Victoria visited in 1887, 1891 and 1898. A recumbent effigy of the duke by Ernest Pellegrini was unveiled in 1890.

Sold to the diocese of Nice in 1970, it is now a Catholic parish church, at 29 avenue du Roi-Albert-Ier. It was listed in 2020 and classified as a historic monument in 2023.

Super-Cannes

The tower you see from the Croisette is the relic of an ambitious failure. In 1924 a housing scheme was conceived for the summit as a residential and tourist resort, with a hotel, an inn and an observation tower reached by a funicular from the lower Californie. It was abandoned; what survives is the dilapidated tower, the ruins of a restaurant and a crenellated concrete water tower. The summit site now belongs to the Emir of Abu Dhabi and is left untended.

The plots were finally serviced in 1966, and Super-Cannes, divided between Cannes and Vallauris, is today a residential district – the one that lent its name to J. G. Ballard's novel of 2000. Others who made the hill their home include the painter Jean-Gabriel Domergue, whose villa now belongs to the town, and Pablo Picasso, at the Villa La Californie. The best way to see the hill is on foot along its winding avenues, with the bay and the Esterel opening up at every turn.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.