High-end renovation in Villefranche-sur-Mer

The old town is a dense medieval fabric of lanes, stairs and passages, of which the rue Obscure, a hundred and thirty metres long, is the best-known element — registered as a historic monument since 1932, it was originally open to the sky and continued the wall-walk of the first rampart. The fabric around it adjoins, tall and narrow, often vaulted at ground level. Load paths run continuously from one building to the next: opening a load-bearing wall in such a fabric engages the structure of a whole block, not that of one dwelling.

The façade register is that of Italianate coloured renders, inherited from the territory’s long belonging to the States of Savoy. A complete renovation is therefore handled in two distinct movements: what is seen from the lane, which belongs to an ensemble and is reasoned as such, and what happens inside, where volume is gained by clearing a vault rather than by demolishing. The Saint-Elme citadel, rebuilt from 1550 by the Milanese engineer Gian Maria Olgiati and classified since 1968, is a reminder of how old the masonry at hand can be.

Two historic monuments stand in the centre: the Saint-Elme citadel, classified, and the rue Obscure, registered. Their presence carries a regime of protection by setting across a substantial part of the old town. In practice, work on a façade, a roof, a joinery element or a shopfront is examined within that framework, and not under the applicable planning rules alone. From the survey onward we therefore establish what belongs to external appearance and what does not — the boundary settles the programme as much as the design.

The harbours of Villefranche — the Darse and the Santé — are among the port sites subject to heritage protection within the Nice metropolitan area. To that is added the coastal framework: a hundred-metre strip not buildable outside urbanised areas, extension of urbanisation limited and justified in the areas close to the shore. On the slopes of the Corne d’Or, where villas are stepped above the roadstead, it is gradient and visibility from the sea that weigh most heavily in a file.

The old town is not accessible to plant. Lanes, stairs and covered passages impose manual handling of materials, and rubble leaves by the same route in reverse. That does not change the nature of a work: it changes its rhythm, the size of what can be brought in, and therefore the design choices made upstream. The roadstead, one of the deepest in the Mediterranean, receives a call of large yachts and cruise ships: seafront activity is added to circulation constraints in season, and sequencing anticipates it.

A complete renovation here calls on our other crafts in an order dictated by the fabric: structural and general building work to make good a vault or a party wall, bespoke finishes and interiors for joinery drawn to the size of openings that hold no right angle, extensions and villa fit-outs when a terrace or an outdoor space enters the brief. The director runs the whole. The commune’s area-served page brings these four crafts together.