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Flag of Beaulieu-sur-Mer - Image by Arnaud Leroy, 1 November 2018
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The municipality of Beaulieu-sur-Mer (3,726 inhabitants - Berlugans - in 2015; 92 ha, therefore the smallest municipality in the department of Alpes-Maritimes by its area; municipal website) is located on the French Riviera, 10 km east of Nice and 10 km west of Monaco. With Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat and Villefranche-sur-Mer, Beaulieu forms the Golden Triangle of the French Riviera, the area where property prices are the highest in France.
Beaulieu was already settled in the Prehistoric times, as evidenced by
an archeological site excavated in 1872 during the building of the Lower
Coast road. The Ligurians probably established there a port and counter
named Anao, subsequently settled by the Romans; a Gallo-Roman and
Paleochristian necropolis was excavated in 1960, yielding 145 tombs and
significant funerary furniture.
In the Middle Ages, the village of Olivo emerged around the chapel
dedicated to St. Mary of the Olive, built in the 11th century on the
ruins of a Gallo-Roman temple.
Subsequently known by its Italian name, Belloloco (lit., "a nice
place"), the town was renamed to Beaulieu after the incorporation of the
County of Nice to France in 1860. The building of the road (1861) and of the railway (1864) connecting Nice to Italy boosted the development of Beaulieu as a sea resort.
In 1886, a petition was tabled to obtain the separation of Beaulieu from
the municipality of Villefranche-sur-Mer, to no avail. The request was
supported by local notables, led by Viscount François de May (d. 1904;
Mayor of Beaulieu from 1900 to 1904). Born from an old family from Nice,
the viscount gained support from the lawyer Alfred Borriglione
(1841-1902). A very popular Mayor of Nice (1878-1886), also General
Councillor (1871-1902), Representative (1876-1894) and Senator
(1894-1902) from the Alpes-Maritimes, Borriglione was also the founder
(1879) and director of the daily Le Petit Niçois.
A second petition was tabled on 31 May 1888. On 10 August 1888, Arsène
Henry, préfet of the departement of Alpes-Maritimes, announced the
election in Beaulieu of a three-member syndical commission; on 2
September, François de May, Joseph Brès and Adrien Riccobono received 62
votes while the list opposed to the separation received only 23 votes.
In a report dated 14 November 1888, the commission recommended the
separation. So did the General Council of Alpes-Maritimes on 24 August
1889. The objection issued in 1890 did not stop the separation process.
On 31 January 1891, the Chamber of Representatives passed the Bill "on
distraction of the hamlet of Beaulieu from the municipality of
Villefranche". Ratified on 18 July 1891 by the Senate, the law
"distracting from the municipality of Villefranche ... the section of
Beaulieu to erect it a distinct municipality" was promulgated by the
President of the Republic, Sadi Carnot (1837-1894; in office, 1887-1894).
In the first municipal elections, held on 20 September 1891, the list
led by Hippolyte Marinoni (1823-1901), the affluent director of the
Petit Journal in Paris since 1882 and one of the inventors of modern press, won all the votes. Not interested in politics, Marinoni resigned
19 days later but never stopped funding social and public works in Beaulieu.
Officially renamed to Beaulieu-sur-Mer in 1908, the town became one of the
preferred vacation places of royalties, industrialists and artists.
Hotel Bristol, built in 1898-1911 by the Danish architect Hans-Georg
Tersling (1857-1920; designer of several hotels and villas in the French
Riviera) for the business magnate Sir John Blundell Maple (1845-1903),
was equipped with bathrooms supplied with heated sea water. It was the
winter vacation place of Margherita of Savoy (1851-1926; Queen consort
of Italy, 1878-1900), of Crown Princes Alexander of Serbia (1888-1934; Crown Prince from 1909 to 1921, then King of Yugoslavia until his death), of Grand Duchess Alexandra Petrovna of Oldenburg (1838-1900) and of the Duchess of Aosta (Hélène of Orléans, 1871-1951). Blundell Maple established in 1899 the Beaulieu Lawn Tennis Club; in 1921, a match opposing the "Divine" Suzanne Lenglen (1899-1938) to
Elizabeth Ryan (1892-1979) was organized there; King Gustav V of Sweden (1858-1950; crowned in 1907) was a daily user of the courts in winter 1947-1948.
Hotel La Réserve, built in 1880 by Pierre Lautier as a fish
restaurant, was named for its fish tanks. Auguste Maïcon (1891-1974),
pioneer of aviation, had a wharf built to transport his wealthy
customers on his hydroplane. James Gordon Bennett Jr. (1841-1918;
publisher of the New York Herald) established a service of mail coach
between the hotel and Nice, and the first telephone line (numbered "01")
in Beaulieu. The books of accounts of La Réserve lists Mistinguett,
Rita Hayworth, Clark Gable, Charlie Chaplin, Sir Thomas Lipton, Paul
Newman, Walt Disney and Robert Redford among its customers.
The Villa Kérylos (in ancient Greek, "a see swallow") was erected on a rocky
promontory limiting Baie des Fourmis in Beaulieu by the architect
Emmanuel Pontremoli, hired by the archeologist and politician Théodore
Reinach.
Built between 1902 and 1908, the villa was modeled on the noble
mansions erected in the 2nd century BC on the Greek island of Delos. The
two builders did not intend to propose a pastiche of an ancient house
but aimed at creating an original design whilst "thinking Greek".
The villa is organized around a peristyle delimited by 12 columns. The
ceremonial rooms (lounges, dining room, library, baths) are on the first
floor, while the private rooms (bedrooms and bathrooms) are on the
second floor. The most precious material was used: Carrara marble for
the columns and exotic wood for furniture. The rooms were decorated with
mosaic and frescoes featuring antique gods and heroes.
Equipped with modern comfort devices, the Villa Kérylos was used by Reinach
as a family, vacation house. He bequeathed the villa to the Institut de
France, provided his family could still live in the villa, which they
did until 1966, when the villa was registered as an Historical Monument (website).
Théodore Reinach (1860-1920) was the youngest of the three Reinach
brothers, born from a Jewish family of German origin and nicknamed by
the humorists of the time "frères Je Sais Tout" - I Know All Brothers,
for the initials of their surnames; Joseph, Salomon and Théodore.
Joseph Reinach (1856-1921), a journalist and politician (Representative
in 1889-1898 and 1906-1914; Mayor of Digne in 1919-1921), was a fierce defender of Captain Alfred Dreyfus (Histoire de l'Affaire Dreyfus, 6
volumes, 1901) and one of the founders of the Ligue des Droits de
l'Homme et du Citoyen
.
Salomon Reinach (1858-1932), an archeologist and a polygrapher, was
Curator of the Musée des antiquités nationales in Saint-Germain-en-Laye
and Professor of Art History at École du Louvre. His anthropological
approach of the history of the religions and his rejection of the
literal reading of Biblical texts was bitterly criticized by the
Catholic conservative movement.
Théodore Reinach is one of the founders of modern Hellenism. A
specialist of Greek inscriptions, he redacted the epigraphic bulletin of
the Revue des Études grecques, which he founded in 1888, for 17 years
and edited, with Rudolphe Dareste de la Chavanne (1824-1911) and
Bernard Haussoullier (1853-1926), the Recueil des Inscriptions
juridiques grecques (1892-1904). He was also a main member of the
Commission for the Delos Inscriptions. He translated and commented
several texts by Sappho and Alcaeus of Mytilene, Timotheos, Herodas and
Callimachus, and the Cyrene Ptolemaic charter (La charte ptolémaïque de
Cyrène, Revue archéologique, 26, 1-32, 1927).
Reinach was also interested in ancient Greek music (La musique
grecque, 1926). He translated Plutarch's treatise with Henri Weil and
contributed the entries "Lyra" and "Tibia" to the Dictionnaire des
Antiquités. He also reconstituted the score of the Apollo anthems,
newly found in Delphi, and had them performed in Paris (Le second hymne
delphique à Apollon, 1897).
As a numismatist, Reinach studied the monetary history of the Jews; in
Numismatique ancienne; trois royaumes de l'Asie Mineure,
Cappadoce--Bithynie--Pont (1888), he proposed a reconstitution of the
dynasties of Bithynia, Pontus and Cappadocia based on coins minted
there. He gave several lectures at the Sorbonne university on "history
through coins" (L'histoire par les monnaies : essais de numismatique
ancienne, 1902) and was appointed Professor at the College de France.
[Gustave Glotz. 1928. Éloge funèbre de M. Théodore Reinach, membre de l'Académie. Comptes rendus des séances de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 72, 321-326]
The architect Emmanuel Pontremoli (1865-1956) worked on several ancient
Greek archeological sites (Delphi, Pergamon, Didyma). His plates
Pergame, restauration et description des monuments de l'Acropole were
awarded the Grand Prize of Architecture at the 1900 Paris Exposition
Universelle. Pontremoli served as the Chief Architect of the National
Museum of Natural History in Paris and was appointed Director of the École
nationale supérieure des beaux-arts (1934-1938). He also designed the
building of the Institute of Human Paleontology established by Prince
Albert I (1848-1922) in Monaco in 1910.
[Arnaud Hurel & Alain Dubourg. 2007.Un programme novateur : l'institut
de paléontologie humaine d'Emmanuel Pontremoli. Livraisons d'histoire de
l'architecture, 13, 51-64]
Ivan Sache, 1 November 2018
The flag of Beaulieu-sur-Mer (photo,
photo,
photo,
photo), widely used in the town, is white with the
municipal arms, "Per fess, 1. Azure a sun or, 2. Or an olive tree vert
fructed sable. The shield surmounted by a mural crown or. Beneath the
shield a scroll argent inscribed with the motto 'PAX IN PULCHRITUDINE'".
The olive tree recalls the original name of the place, Olivo. The sun
represents the mild, warm local climate. The Latin motto reads "Peace
Within Splendor".
Ivan Sache, 22 November 2008
![[Flag]](../images/f/fr-06$bm.gif)
Flag of Port de Beaulieu - Image by Ivan Sache, 1 November 2018
The marina of Beaulieu-sur-Mer (Port de Beaulieu) was established in 1967 in the Little Africa borough, named for its specific microclimate. The flag of Port de Beaulieu is white with the marina's emblem.
Ivan Sache, 1 November 2018
![[Burgee]](../images/f/fr-06~bm.gif)
Burgee of YCB - Image by Ivan Sache, 22 May 2006
The burgee of the YCB (website<) is made of four equal triangles, two red along the hoist, a white in the center and a blue at the point of the burgee.
Ivan Sache, 22 May 2006
