La Pausa, Mediterranean villa in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France

La Pausa is a detached villa above the village of Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, built in the early 1930s for Coco Chanel to designs by architect Robert Streitz. Its three wings face a shaded courtyard, and a stone staircase rises from the entrance hall. The main house has seven bedrooms, three living rooms, a dining room and two kitchens, with two smaller guest villas on the grounds.

The villa was commissioned by Coco Chanel in 1929 and built on land that had previously belonged to Monaco's ruling family. The construction was a major undertaking of that era and soon became the setting for significant stays and gatherings.

The name La Pausa comes from the Italian for "pause, rest", linked to the legend that Mary Magdalene paused near here on her journey from Jerusalem after the crucifixion. Chanel modelled the house on the 12th-century convent-orphanage at Aubazines in Corrèze, where she spent her childhood: a stone staircase rises from the entrance hall and a cloister encloses a courtyard. A motif of five windows recurs throughout, a tribute to Chanel No. 5.

La Pausa stands above the village of Roquebrune, not on a clifftop, and is a private villa bought back by Chanel in 2015, so it is not open for tours. Views reach Menton and the Italian border on one side and Monaco on the other. The grounds cover three hectares within a forest of old olive trees.

Churchill first came to La Pausa in 1956 and spent 54 weeks there over three and a half years, roughly a third of each year, calling it "Pausaland". There he wrote and edited part of his History of the English Speaking Peoples. Clementine Churchill found the house claustrophobic and joined him on only four of his eleven visits.