‘Gatsby’ home sale is a mistake
Experts deny that F.Scott Fitzgerald lived in Riviera house that is up for sale at €27.5million
AFTER news stories round the world that the former Riviera house of F. Scott Fitzgerald was up for sale for €27.5million it has been revealed that the Gatsby author never lived there and never owned the 800sq.m villa named Picolette.
Estate agent Sotheby's International Realty described the waterside house on Cap d'Antibes as a "jewel with views of the sea" and said Fitzgerald and wife Zelda lived there between 1924 and 1926. He is said to have featured it in his book Tender Is The Night.
However, Marianne Estène Chauvin, owner of the Belles-Rives hotel group and a friend of the former owners of Picolette, told Nice Matin newspaper that Côte d'Azur Sotheby's International Realty had got it wrong as Fitzgerald did not live there but in the neighbouring house, which later became the Hotel Belles-Rives.
And she got backing from Antibes historian Renaud Duménil, who said that Picolette was a “superb villa and one of the oldest on the Cap d’Antibes but Francis Scott Fitzgerald never lived there!”
Mme Estène-Chauvin said that Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald lived in the villa Saint-Louis, which later became the Hotel Belles-Rives.
Today the French-language version of the Côte d'Azur Sotheby's International Realty still made mention of the F.Scott Fitzgerald link, but this was not in the English-language version.
