Villa Pablo Picasso

Picasso is 73 years old. At this ripe age, men usually retire. But not Pablo. His affair with Jacqueline Rock is in full swing. They're 45 years apart in age.

The new girl did not burn desire to live in the scenery, soaked in the history of the past relationships of the artist.

In the middle of the 19th century, a French consul lived in Moscow. His name was Eugène Tripet. He married a Russian noblewoman Alexandra Skripitsyna.

The couple moved to Cannes and built themselves a beautiful villa on a hill. Other Russian aristocrats began to settle around them. As a result, the whole hill locals began to call Petite Russie - "Little Russia". That's where Picasso bought the villa.

The main house is 1200 meters square on three levels. Living room with high ceilings. Dining room overlooking the bay. Library. Eight bedrooms. On the plot - a garden with palm trees, a guest wing and a house for servants.

The deal paid off in terms of energy. Jacqueline felt like a full-fledged mistress here. She took over as the artist's secretary and manager. Picasso, on the other hand, was experiencing an incredible creative upswing. It was in California that he worked at a fantastic speed.

Here the artist painted a series of 58 canvases of "Meninas" by Velázquez and endless portraits of Jacqueline.

Picasso was visited by Marc Chagall and Salvador Dali, Ernest Hemingway and Brigitte Bardot. The 22-year-old actress came to the Cannes Festival and in between visited the 75-year-old Picasso.

After 6 years of living in "California" Picasso and Jacqueline left. The reason was trivial. Right in front of their windows, developers built an apartment building that completely blocked their view of the sea.

After Picasso's death, the villa was inherited by his granddaughter. Her name was Marina - an heiress on the line of the artist's first wife Olga Khokhlova. It turns out, the Russian trace stretches through all 170 years of the house. From Skripitsyna to Khokhlova.

Marina inherited ten thousand of her grandfather's works and the villa itself. In the 1990s, she started there restoration. For many years she used the villa herself. And in 2015 she put it up for sale for €150 million. And she sold it quickly.

In expensive real estate, there is more often than not a hidden driver of the deal. Most of the time, women are behind the purchase of huge residences. The story of the purchase of Villa California is just such a case. A story where a new love requires new square meters.