Chateau de la Garoupe stands at one of the most commanding positions on Cap d'Antibes, built on four acres at the very point of the peninsula. In 1907, British Member of Parliament Charles McLaren, later Baron Aberconway, purchased the land and commissioned the eminent English architect Ernest George — along with his associate Alfred Bowman Yeates — to design a residence worthy of the spectacular setting. The resulting chateau features a distinctive long facade with half-moon windows and a grand stairway descending to the sea.
The gardens became as celebrated as the architecture itself, created by McLaren's wife Laura, Baroness Aberconway, who was a passionate horticulturalist. Her work included a magnificent pergola draped with 12-metre-high rose bushes alongside plantings of irises and begonias. Over the decades, the property attracted a remarkable roster of guests and tenants, including composer Cole Porter and his wife Linda, as well as Pablo Picasso.
The estate passed to the McLarens' daughter Florence and her husband Sir Henry Norman, who expanded the property and added an extra storey. In 1999, the chateau was purchased by Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky for 22 million euros. After Berezovsky's death in 2013, French authorities confiscated both the chateau and the neighboring Villa Le Clocher, judging them to be proceeds of money laundering. The chateau was subsequently sold at auction in 2024.