Antibes, Juan-les-Pins and the Cap in verified numbers and documented fact: €3M+ villa analytics from DVF — commune and Cap separated — plus the sourced story of the peninsula's legendary estates.
One commune, three markets: old Antibes, Juan-les-Pins, and the Cap d'Antibes — whose cadastral sections we analyse separately below, something commune-wide statistics never show. Official DVF analytics plus the documented story of the Cap's estates, every fact carrying its source.
Antibes recorded 151 villa sales at €3M or above over 2016–2025 — €1.01 billion in total, at a decade median of €4.2M (DVF, estate-deduplicated). Within that, the Cap d'Antibes sections alone account for 117 sales and €0.84 billion.
The regional heritage inventory records that the Hôtel Provençal, Juan-les-Pins' Art Deco landmark, was built in 1927 for the American railroad heir Frank Jay Gould, president of the Société La Gauloise, by Lucien Stable — a Cannes-based architect trained at the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris. Gould's stated ambition was 'a modern palace of high standing, rising at the edge of the pinewood, facing the sea,' designed to attract a wealthy clientele comparable to the Grand Hôtel du Cap and hold it in the heart of the resort — the decisive act that turned Juan-les-Pins into a summer destination in an era when the Riviera was still a winter station. The reinforced-concrete tower held 254 rooms and 6 apartments over seven storeys. Long derelict, the building has been under conversion since the mid-2000s, latterly under British owner John Caudwell.
Antibes · Source: Inventaire Général du Patrimoine Culturel, Région Sud — dossier IA06001131, 1927
Antibes began as Antipolis, one of two colonies planted along this coast by the Phocaean Greeks of Massalia (Marseille). In a study published in the journal *Ktema*, hellenist Jean Ducat treats Antipolis and Nikaia (Nice) as 'an almost inseparable pair' of Massaliot outposts set 22 km apart at the eastern edge of Marseille's territory, with Antipolis functioning as a commercial comptoir securing the sea route. Archaic pottery unearthed across the old town — grey wavy-line wares, Ionian-style cups, black-figure Attic ceramics — points to a Greek presence from around the mid-6th century BC, making the walled vieil Antibes one of the oldest continuously inhabited urban sites on the French Riviera. Ducat noted that Antibes archaeology was then undergoing 'spectacular development,' and excavation beneath the old town continues to refine the founding date.
Antibes · Source: Persée — Jean Ducat, 'Antipolis et Nikaia', Ktema 7 (1982), 1982
The Inventaire record for Villa Eilenroc, at the tip of the Cap d'Antibes, traces the estate to Hugh-Hope Loudon, a former governor of the Dutch East Indies who assembled some ten hectares from around 1860 and completed the villa in 1867; the design is attributed to Charles Garnier — architect of the Paris Opera — or to his pupil Vidal. James Wyllie, a wealthy English businessman and associate of W.E. Gladstone, bought it in 1873, renamed it Eilenroc (an anagram of his wife Cornélie's name) and kept it until his death in 1908, aged 90. The park, laid out from 1883 and enlarged by five hectares plus the ten-hectare Bois de la Croé, became one of the largest on the Cap. Americans Louis-Dudley and Hélène Beaumont acquired the villa in 1927 and redecorated in 1928; in 1982 the widowed Hélène Beaumont bequeathed the whole estate to the town of Antibes, which still runs it through a foundation.
Antibes · Source: Base Mérimée / POP (Plateforme Ouverte du Patrimoine), 1982
The only public route through the Cap d'Antibes' most private quarter is the Sentier de Tire-Poil, the old chemin des douaniers along the eastern shore. The tourism office's own account is candid about the enclave dynamic: in the early twentieth century the great waterfront properties privatised the customs officers' path, and only the coastal-access law allowed the town to take it back and reopen it. The roughly two-hour walk from the Plage de la Garoupe car park on avenue André Sella runs beneath the boundary walls of three estates it names — the Château de la Garoupe (1907), the Château de la Croë (1927, once home to the Duke and Duchess of Windsor) and the Villa Eilenroc, bequeathed to Antibes in 1982. The shoreline is a Natura 2000 site, and the municipality closes the path outright in heavy weather — the estates behind the walls remain entirely sealed.
Antibes · Source: Office de Tourisme d'Antibes Juan-les-Pins, 2026
Pablo Picasso, then living across the bay in Golfe-Juan, accepted curator Romuald Dor de la Souchère's offer of a studio inside the Château Grimaldi — the seafront castle built on the ancient Greek acropolis of Antipolis — and worked there through the autumn of 1946. He left the city 23 paintings and 44 drawings from that stay, among them *La Joie de vivre*, *Satyre, Faune et centaure au trident* and *Le Gobeur d'oursins*, adding 78 ceramics from the Madoura workshop in Vallauris by 1948. On 27 December 1966 Antibes renamed the château the Musée Picasso, the first museum in the world dedicated to the artist; a 1991 gift from Jacqueline Picasso's estate further enriched the collection.
Antibes · Source: Ville d'Antibes Juan-les-Pins — Découvrir le Musée Picasso, 1946
In October 1954 Nicolas de Staël installed his studio on the ramparts of old Antibes, overlooking the sea, the port and Fort Carré, and worked at a furious pace on still lifes, seascapes and nudes. Returning from two Domaine Musical concerts in Paris, he began *Le Concert* on 14 March 1955 — a monumental 3.50 × 6 m composition: a black grand piano and an ochre double bass against a field of incandescent vermilion. Two days later, on 16 March 1955, he took his own life from the terrace of his studio, leaving the canvas unfinished. The Musée Grimaldi mounted a posthumous exhibition as early as August 1955 (his widow Françoise donated a still life that year), and in 1986 *Le Concert* itself entered the Musée Picasso in Antibes through a joint effort of the city, the French state and patrons — the anchor of the museum's modern-art wing.
Antibes · Source: Portail des savoirs des Alpes-Maritimes (Département 06), 1955
Port Vauban is the commune's defining access asset: billed by the tourist office as Europe's largest marina, it spreads across roughly 62 acres of water with 1,501 berths along 4,200 linear metres of quay, taking everything from four-metre fishing boats to 165-metre yachts — on an anchorage used since antiquity, the bay of Saint-Roch having served the Phoenicians as a commercial port. The modern marina configuration dates from the 1970s. Scarcity concentrates on the Quai Camille Rayon, the famed "quai des Milliardaires", in operation since 1986: just 19 berths for superyachts of 70 to 165 metres, which is why the world's largest private vessels cluster at Antibes. The port — with its surrounding economy of shipyards, refit trades and crew agencies — is now managed by the Port Vauban 21 operator.
Antibes · Source: Office de Tourisme d'Antibes Juan-les-Pins, 2026
The Bois de la Garoupe, 9.04 hectares on the eastern flank of the Cap d'Antibes below the Garoupe lighthouse and the sanctuary of Notre-Dame de la Garoupe, was acquired by the Conservatoire du littoral in 1980 and has been managed by the City of Antibes Juan-les-Pins since 1981 — a permanent barrier to development on one of the Cap's last unbuilt slopes overlooking the Anse de la Salis. The Conservatoire's site sheet describes three vegetation systems: a holm-oak wood harboring lichens identified in 2011 as 'rarissimes' and rated of 'very strong' Natura 2000 importance; Aleppo pine stands over thyme and laurestine; and open grassland dotted with wild olives. The wood also preserves the Cap's agricultural memory — double-faced dry-stone restanques, cart ramps and threshing floors from its past as olive and cereal terraces, before villas claimed the peninsula.
Antibes · Source: Conservatoire du littoral — site sheet Bois de la Garoupe, 1980
151 sales totalling €1,010 million over 2016–2025, at a median of €4.2 million (DVF, estate-deduplicated).
The Cap's cadastral sections recorded 117 €3M+ villa sales over the decade at a median of €4.3 million — versus €4.2 million for the commune as a whole (DVF).