The sale of the Bagatelle villa in Cannes was recently made official. It was the luxury group LVMH which purchased this Art Deco property with 12 rooms.
Could this be the end of a long dark series? Since its construction in 1928 on the heights of Cannes, the Bagatelle villa has seen a succession of wealthy owners with often troubled profiles. Designed as a “magnificent Provençal Louis XVI house” for Duke Auguste-Armand de La Force, member of the French Academy, the place will notably pass into the hands of a Puerto Rican billionaire, the Algerian golden-boy Rafik Khalifa before seducing successively two Russian oligarchs. According to Le Monde, which investigated this sulphurous villa in 2022, the premises would have been taken over by the architect and designer Philippe Avanzi in 2018 in order to restore the luster and soul of their origins.
At the end of a transaction concluded last April but which has just been made public by the Bloomberg agency, it is the French luxury group LVMH which becomes its new and very respectable buyer. At the end of a transaction worth nearly 50 million euros (46.5 million excluding furniture and costs), the luxury real estate agency Magrey&Sons signed the acquisition of one of the most coveted on the Côte d’Azur and one of the most expensive too. If Bernard Arnault’s group has not commented on this acquisition, it completes the (long) series of real estate gems acquired in recent months and years.
Home receptions
The Cannes villa of nearly 3,000 m² of living space with its 12 bedrooms and enough to accommodate and accommodate up to 18 members of staff will be in good company with other “trifles” now bearing the LVMH logo: such as 150 avenue des Champs-Élysées, 7, rue de la Paix or 22 avenue Montaigne and a few others. For some time now, the group has also shown a pronounced taste for the hotel industry. Thus, as will be the case in Cannes, the group’s brands will be able to organize exhibitions and exclusive events on site. The villa can also be rented in high season when tourists flock to the Côte d’Azur (in summer and during the main festivals). No longer need to rent villas or yachts, LVMH will be able to organize some of its receptions at home.
