La Pausa

La Pausa is a large detached villa in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, in the Alpes-Maritimes department of France. It was designed and built by the French fashion designer Coco Chanel in the early 1930s, and owned by Chanel until 1953. La Pausa was sold by Chanel to the Hungarian publisher Emery Reves. The former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill spent roughly a third of each year at La Pausa from 1956 to 1958 with Reves and his wife, Wendy, and wrote and edited part of his History of the English Speaking Peoples there. La Pausa was occupied by Wendy Reves until 2007. The principal rooms of La Pausa and its significant art collection were recreated at the Dallas Museum of Art during her lifetime and under her direction. The Reves wing was opened in 1985. Situated above the village of Roquebrune, the house enjoys views toward Menton and the French border with Italy on one side, and Monaco on the other. Its name refers to the legend that Mary Magdalene "paused" near here on her journey from Jerusalem following the crucifixion of Jesus.

Chanel bought the five-acre plot on which La Pausa was built for 1.8 million French francs in February 1929. The plot had formerly been part of the hunting grounds of the ruling family of Monaco, the Grimaldis, and contained wild olive and orange groves. The villa was built less than a year later. The final cost of the villa was 6 million francs, a large sum for the time. It is not clear whether Chanel or her lover, Hugh Grosvenor, 2nd Duke of Westminster financed the building and furnishing of La Pausa. La Pausa was built by architect Robert Streitz, who sought to build 'the ideal Mediterranean villa'.

The design of the house modelled on the 12th-century convent-orphanage in Aubazines, in the department of Corrèze, which Chanel spent her childhood. A stone staircase leads up from the main entrance hall and a cloister encloses a courtyard. A design of five windows is repeated throughout the house, in tribute to Chanel's perfume, Chanel No. 5. Chanel bought more than 20,000 curved tiles from surrounding homes for the roof, and furnished the house sparsely in shades of white and beige. Each bathroom has a servants' entrance. Chanel wo

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