Villa Thuret holds a unique place in the history of Cap d'Antibes as both the earliest significant villa on the peninsula and one of France's most important botanical research sites. Created in 1857 by Gustave Thuret, a distinguished French botanist renowned for his pioneering studies of algae reproduction, the villa was built after Thuret was advised to settle in the south of France for health reasons. He chose a plot on Cap d'Antibes and established what would become the first privately funded research laboratory in France.
The surrounding botanical garden, covering over 3.5 hectares, was designed as an acclimatization station where Thuret and his colleague Jean-Baptiste Edouard Bornet conducted experiments with exotic plant species. The garden today houses over 1,600 different species of trees and shrubs from around the world. The novelist George Sand visited in 1868 and declared it 'the loveliest garden I have ever seen' in her Letters of a Traveller.
Following Thuret's death in 1875, the estate was bequeathed to the French nation in 1878 and has been dedicated to botanical research ever since. Today it is managed by INRAE (the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment) and holds the designation of 'Maison des illustres' from the Ministry of Culture. The gardens are open to the public, offering a peaceful alternative to the private estates that dominate the rest of the Cap.