Villa Cypris, Historic villa in Cap Martin, France.
Villa Cypris is a Neo-Byzantine villa built in 1904, its lower walls of rough grey stone banded with red brick and its upper storey of red brick with lighter stone trim. Tall brick-framed arches open onto the sea, and a stone balustrade runs along the left side. The gardens, laid out in 1909, descend steeply to the water.
Villa Cypris was built around 1904 for Cyprienne Dubernet, widow of Olympe Hériot, owner of the Grands Magasins du Louvre. Architect Édouard Arnaud drew on Byzantine style and Monaco Cathedral. The gardens were laid out in 1909 by Raffaele Mainella. The villa and gardens were registered as a monument historique on 19 September 1990 and received the label Patrimoine du XXe siècle on 1 March 2001.
The name honours Cyprienne Dubernet, widow of Olympe Hériot of the Grands Magasins du Louvre, and also echoes Kypris, the Greek name for Aphrodite's island. Raffaele Mainella, an Italian painter from Benevento, designed the gardens from 1909, including a Venetian-style loggia, a sunken Dutch garden with a long canal, and a pergola of columns and brick arches modelled on the Mosque–Cathedral of Córdoba.
The property is a private residence viewed from exterior vantage points and nearby coastal paths. Access is best on foot, as the terrain slopes steeply toward the cliffs with gardens integrated into the hillside.
The garden pergola's sixteen marble columns and brick arches were modelled on the Mosque–Cathedral of Córdoba, not a generic mosque. Landscape painter Raffaele Mainella, who also designed the gardens of Villa Torre Clementina, laid out the grounds in 1909.
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