Ha! We bet you thought it was three houses just like this cover photo! No, the residences we have selected are different kinds of Provençal.
This one is infamous, and its most famous resident was never real so never lived there. It’s the Château d’If just off the coast of Marseille. Perhaps you’ve heard of the Count of Monte Cristo, the character created by Alexandre Dumas, who fictionally was imprisoned here.
Trying to be cutting-edge, we asked ChatGPT to provide us a summary of the Dumas story, with a rhyme scheme, of course:
Betrayed by friends, in chains he lay confined,
A secret treasure frees him from despair,
He sails forth masked, with vengeance in his mind,
To punish falsehood’s heirs.
With wealth and wit, he weaves a deadly snare,
The guilty fall, their fortunes torn apart,
Yet mercy stirs within his wounded heart,
And hope of peace is there.
We passed by the Château d’If during a ferry ride to and from the Frioul Islands which lie only about 6 km from the heart of Marseille. As you can see, it was a beautiful sunny day. (Marseille enjoys around 300 sunny days each year.)
On this day, we didn’t have a lot of time before we had to catch our train home, and we weren’t particularly interested in exploring another stone castle, so a float-by was just fine. What we did find interesting were the fine views back to the city of Marseille, which added to the revision of our preconceptions of the city. One of Marseille’s reputations is that much of the city is dangerous, with problems of gangs and drugs. Apparently, a bit of that is accurate, but there is so much more to this big vibrant complicated city. On this short visit, we were able to experience a few neighborhoods that ranged from relaxed and leafy, to very ordered and formal, rather like some Paris neighborhoods. It’s a city worth exploring!
If you’re interested in castle history, here’s a bit about the Château d’If:
The Château d’If, located on the small islet of If near Marseille, was ordered by King Francis I in 1516 and built between 1524 and 1531. It was designed as a fortress to protect Marseille’s harbor from naval invasions, particularly after an attack by Charles V in 1524. Although it never faced a direct attack, its isolated location made it an ideal prison from the late 16th century, holding political and religious prisoners. The castle gained fame from Alexandre Dumas’ novel, “The Count of Monte Cristo,” symbolizing an escape-proof prison. Its military role faded as it became known primarily for imprisonment. (※)
This house is actually 330 residences in the Sainte-Anne neighborhood of Marseille. It’s the Unité d’Habitation, La Cité Radieuse. In architectural circles, La Cité Radieuse and its architect are big deals. David had long wanted to see first-hand what it was really about. We benefited greatly from an excellent guided tour offered by the Marseille Office de Tourisme.
So, what’s the big deal?
First, the architect of the building was Le Corbusier, né Charles Jeanneret. His career spanned the years of 1912 to 1965, and he was an enormously influential contributor to the birth and development of what we now call modern architecture. He was a deep thinker and also a great polemicist and marketer — for good and ill! On the one hand, he was a leader in the movement to provide safe, light-filled, sanitary housing and communities for the many people displaced by the Second World War. He was an innovator in the use of concrete for durable and affordable construction. On the other hand, many of his sociological ideas about urban planning turned out to be wrong. One heritage of his ideas in the hands of people less thoughtful has been the notoriously failed high-rise housing projects in cities around the world. Less skilled architects who were fascinated by his explorations of concrete have given us too many brutal off-putting buildings.
In this building, which was constructed just after the war from 1945-52, we get to witness many of Le Corbusier’s innovative ideas first hand. We’ve separated our blog report into an architectural-nerdy section (which we invite you to skip if you’d like!) and a people-focused section. So here goes.
Architectural-history nerdy details
The context for this project was the devastation of much of Marseille during the Second World War. In particular, the Vieux Port district (the Old Port) had been decimated. In all of the city, some 3,600 buildings were destroyed and 10,800 damaged. While today the Vieux Port is the tourist center of the city, in the centuries before the war, it was a working port and home to dock workers and fishermen. After the war, a lot of people needed housing.
By 1945, Le Corbusier had fully established his reputation. Through his connections, he was awarded the commission to design a cutting-edge collective-housing building in the outskirts of Marseille. The express purpose was to provide homes and community for many of the people displaced from the Vieux Port. Le Corbusier came armed with a lot new ideas, and his clients encouraged him to deliver a new, experimental housing solution.
Le Corbusier’s central idea was to create a vertical village, including dwellings, commerce, education and recreation, and to free up the ground for nature, light and space. This idea of a vertical village in a park was far more radical at the time than it might seem to us today. You have to picture the dense low-rise city neighborhoods of pre-war Marseille or of any European city for that matter. No one had ever seen such a free-standing tall (for the time) large residential building before.
Le Corbusier conceived of the corridors in the building as streets. Some streets were simple wide hallways onto which the apartments opened. But on two special levels mid-way up the 18 stories, the streets were dedicated to businesses and services, such as boulangerie, boucherie, hair salon, sundries store, and the like — like a main or high street of a traditional village. Part of the top floor and all of the roof level were dedicated to an elementary school, gymnasium, outdoor theater, and kids’ recreation swimming pool.
Among Le Corbusier’s goals for the apartments was that they be quiet, full of natural light, and healthy. Most of the apartments occupy two levels. One level extends for half the depth of the building (from “street” to windows) and is accessed from the “street.” The other level runs the full width of the building, providing air circulation throughout the apartment. The broad facades of the building face east and west, so morning and afternoon sun lights the units.
The rooftop world of school, running track, gymnasium, and outdoor theater is quite wonderful. In the purely formal design realm, Le Corbusier developed lovely sculptural forms in the rough concrete. These curves and evocations of ships and sails soften and humanise this big concrete world. Too bad so many of his architect successors forgot (or couldn’t equal) this mastery of sculptural and spatial design.
The people story
A lot of thinking went into the design of the building, all in service of providing healthy, safe, and socially rich residences for families traumatized by the war. How well did that work? This is in part a tale of the deep challenges when tradition and radical innovation meet. Ideas are simple; people are not!
The building was dedicated in 1952. Families displaced from the Vieux Port were invited to move in, but they didn’t want to. They called the place the La Maison du Fada, or Madman’s House in the Procençal dialect; they called the people who lived there Fadas — Crazies! All that displaced people had known were the old port neighborhoods, which were dense, communal, and street-oriented. Here was an alien concrete monster removed from streets and neighborhoods, and inconveniently located 5 km or 3.1 miles from their longtime homes and workplaces at the port.
After the port families refused to relocate to the building, mostly middle-class functionaries like postmen, firemen, and administrators, and professionals like teachers and doctors became the first residents. They overcame their reservations about this strange apartment building because they were given subsidies.
The post-war period in France was an era of making new families. Men went out to work; women stayed at home to care for their young families. For the women, having the day-to-day services nearby and integral was necessary to make life in this vertical village viable. Some of the details of the apartments show this. Along the “streets” outside the apartments, there are two small operable panels. The upper one was used by the shops for delivery of purchases directly into the kitchens of the apartments. Just below this panel was another for the thrice-weekly delivery of blocks of ice for the ice box — as in the box where you put ice. Refrigerators hadn’t made it into ordinary people’s houses yet because the new appliances were still too expensive.
To today’s eyes, the layout of the apartment is ordinary. We’ve all seen, perhaps lived in, apartments in which just inside the entry you find a compact kitchen that opens into the main dining and living area. But this was a radical change in 1950s France. People were used to houses with large kitchens centered on the big food-prep and family-gathering table; the kitchen was the heart of daily living. If the family even had a separate dining room, it was for special occasions only. But in these new modern apartments, the kitchen was designed solely for efficient food preparation. The intention was that the social life of the family would spread out through the entire open living/dining space. This radical reworking of food, dining and social space required no small amount of adjustment!
In the context of the 1950s in France, provision of water into the home and treatment of waste were not the norm. At the time, 15-20% of French homes had a toilet; somewhere between 6 and 19% had a bathtub, and only 37% had any running water at all. The typical apartment in La Ville Radieuse includes sinks in the kitchen, parent’s bathroom, and in each of two kids’ rooms. The parent’s bathroom includes a bathtub, and there’s a shower for the kids. The family shares a single toilet. At the time, this was a remarkable change and improvement.
After all the details of apartment layouts and concrete construction and mid-century sociology, there’s a simple surprise here: The building enjoys stupendous views to the mountains and sea around Marseille. Even today, after many more large buildings have been built in this city, the views from both sides of La Cité Radieuse remain unencumbered. There’s simple joy in the light and space and grandeur of the vistas.
In the early years, the residents of the building were mostly lower-middle class young families. In the 1960s and 1970s, this vertical village fell out of favor. The brutal aesthetic, the isolation from Marseille’s vibrant neighborhood life, and the costs of upkeep led to disfavor and some neglect. But starting in the 1980s, more and more people started to recognize the visionary qualities of the building. In 2016, La Cité Radieuse was granted World Heritage status by UNESCO.
These days, the residential demographic has shifted to upper-middle-class lovers of design and design history. Many current residents want to live in a Le Corbusier building. Apparently, at least some among them fit out their apartments with period cabinetry and furniture. There’s even a small hotel on one of the “streets” for visiting enthusiasts. Maybe next time!
And now for something completely different. Villa Kérylos is completely out of our price range and a stunning surprise.
About 15 minutes outside Nice by commuter train, we followed Google Maps to a relatively unassuming seaside villa in the town of Beaulieu-sur-Mer. (The name of the town translates to something like Pretty Place at the Sea, which is exactly what it is!)
But when we stepped inside, we found ourselves in an amazing fantasy world inspired by ancient Greece.
Villa Kérylos was the passion project for (rich) French archeologist Théodore Reinach, built at the start of the 20th century. Reinach could afford to commission this villa thanks to his family’s substantial wealth from the banking world, as well as his two marriages to women from equally well-off families. He was a polymath — a renowned archaeologist, mathematician, lawyer, philologist, epigrapher, historian, numismatist, and musicologist. And a lover of ancient Greek culture. His passion, knowledge, and means made this villa possible.
Théodore Reinach selected architect Emmanuel Pontremoli to design Villa Kerylos primarily because of Pontremoli’s deep expertise in ancient Greek architecture and archaeology, which matched Reinach’s vision for a scholarly tribute to Hellenistic civilization. Pontremoli had spent years on archaeological digs in Asia Minor and held prizes for his knowledge of classical antiquity, notably winning the prestigious Grand Prix de Rome for architecture[5]. Reinach wanted more than a reproduction—he sought a creative reimagining of a Greek noble house, requiring an architect who could deeply understand and interpret ancient Greek culture while integrating modern innovations.
The two men shared a passion for antiquity and collaborated closely, with Reinach granting Pontremoli significant creative freedom to conceive every detail, from building layout to decorative arts and furnishings. This partnership allowed the villa to embody the spirit and aesthetics of Greek civilization while serving contemporary needs—a concept that suited both Reinach’s scholarly ambitions and Pontremoli’s architectural expertise.
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The owner’s and architect’s understanding of ancient Greek houses and arts inspired the design of the villa. This is not an archeological reconstruction nor a pastiche of specific archeological remains. While founded in authentic research, the experience in the villa is more of a romantic excursion into an imagined Ancient Greece. With indoor plumbing, of course.
Until Reinach’s death in 1928, he and his family did live in the villa, at least for part of each year.
Reinach bequeathed the estate to the Institut de France, and it became a museum open to the public in 1967.
Imagine growing up in this provençal house!
Source for cover photo
September 2025