Summer Dispatch from the South of France: 2024

Early summer in the South of France always has a special energy as the coast starts to prepare for the high season. There is a buzz in the air for what is new and who is coming, but also a sweet anticipation for savoring what remains unchanged: those classic rites of summer, like the season’s first crisp glass of rosé with toes in the sand at Pampelonne Beach or the first dive into the Mediterranean from Eden-Roc.

My colleague Kathryn Nathanson, who heads up our Productions team, and I spent two weeks on the Côte d’Azur shooting at the Palaces de France hotels for an upcoming video series and getting a bead on what to know for this summer on the Riviera.

Below are the culture highlights not to miss. You can also read more about my hotel and restaurant discoveries—including rumors of the first Louis Vuitton hotel, a more affordable sister property to Villa La Coste and the dreamiest seaside tables to reserve now—and explore Kathryn’s favorite finds in St. Tropez.

Artists and writers continue to shape the way we frame the beauty of the South of France. From iconic landmarks like the Matisse Chapel and Fondation Maeght in Vence to more modern musts like Maja Hoffman’s Luma Foundation in Arles and what I consider the ultimate fun day for contemporary art lovers, Château La Coste, there are cultural gems dotting the entire region. Of course, the annual photo festival Rencontres Arles, the Avignon Festival of theater, dance and concerts in the Popes’ Palace and the jazz festivals in Antibes in July and Nice in August add another layer of yearly magic.

This year, I discovered some new treasures, starting with Damien Hirst’s takeover show at Château La Coste, where every gallery space was filled with his works, from his new “Empress” paintings and “The Secret Garden” paintings to his signature sharks in tanks. “It’s beyond brilliant what has been achieved at Château La Coste, which is such a wonderful and unique place,” said Hirst of the landmark show. “I am thrilled and excited to be the first artist to do a takeover show and have my work exhibited across the whole estate.” While the gallery exhibits have just ended, his statues will remain through the year, and he is currently working on a permanent piece for La Coste, his first “building.”

Nearby in Aix-en-Provence, work continues on the renovation of artist Paul Cézanne’s childhood home Bastide du Jas de Bouffan, where last summer a mural by the legendary Impressionist painter was discovered under layers of wallpaper and plaster. The house is due to open as a research center next year, and the town’s mayor has heralded the mural’s discovery as a chance to rewrite the history of Aix’s affiliation with Cézanne. “He is the emblem and ambassador of our city,” she said, and the newly discovered mural will be the only work to remain in his hometown.

After he spent a prolific season in the 1940s working in Antibes’ Grimaldi Castle, Pablo Picasso gave 23 paintings to the town for its museum, and generous gestures continue to add to the area’s art offerings. In the charming port town of Menton, the extraordinary gardens of Les Colombières have been lovingly restored by their current owner and have become a mecca for garden connoisseurs. Its creator, Ferdinand Bac, was an artist and writer, known as the father of Mediterranean garden design. “The soul of gardens,” he wrote, “shelters the greatest sum of serenity at man’s disposal.”

Proof is his greatest work, the garden and house Les Colombières. When I toured them with their civic-minded owner, he allowed that his next project will be to transform the nearby gardens of Serre de la Madone, a labor of love by Major Lawrence Johnston, which was built between 1924 and 1939. My patron friend was also instrumental in the opening of Villa E-1027, Eileen Gray’s iconic modernist masterwork, and Le Corbusier’s Cabanon de Vacances, in Cap Roquebrune. The group that rescued both structures, Cap Moderne, chose to reconstruct them and restore their interiors, adding back some of Gray’s revered furniture designs.

As 20th-century architecture professor Tim Benton said of the importance of E-1027, “Left empty, this is one of 100 important houses of the late Modern period, but the interior is one of [the] four most important modern interiors in the world.” Town & Country Editor in Chief Stellene Volandes, who had been dreaming of visiting the properties for more than a decade, just visited and declared, “I couldn’t stop staring at the view, and then turning to stare inside, and then staring to look up at Corbusier, or down into Gray. A full idea of how to live with every turn. And worth the wait.”

Two other philanthropic art lovers have also recently added to the area’s cultural offerings. In St. Paul-de-Vence the Fondation CAB, which was established by Belgian Hubert Bonnet, celebrates minimalist art and design in seasonal exhibitions in its headquarters, a 1950s modern building with views of Cap d’Antibes. While artists can apply for the residency program, even the non-gifted can spend the night in one of four rooms designed by architect Charles Zana or in the iconic Jean Prouvé house (at six by six meters) on the property. There is also a charming café, Sol, with Charlotte Perriand furniture.

A winding drive away in Mougins, FAMM (Femme Artistes du Musée de Mougins) just opened last week and is the world’s second museum dedicated to women artists and the first in Europe. Created by commodities-trader and collector Christian Levett, the space formerly housed his collection of antiquities and Old Masters. His new museum highlights his most recent collecting obsession—with over 100 works by women artists, ranging from Impressionist paintings by Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt to Expressionist pieces by Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning and Joan Mitchell and contemporary ones by Tracey Emin and Cecily Brown.

“Almost every one of the greatest women artists of the last 160 years is featured, and in many cases, some of their most famous paintings,” Levett told me last week, just after the museum’s grand opening. “The mission of the museum is to leave people feeling amazed, exhilarated and educated by what they've seen, and to walk away saying to themselves, ‘How did we never see a museum like this before? How have we only been in museums almost entirely made up of artworks by white, male artists?’ If we achieve that, then we have given these amazing women artists their voices back, who were mostly famous during their day, but for too long now have been written out of the art-history books.” Imagine what Picasso and Cézanne would think if they could visit this new Riviera refuge.