Is planning permission required for an extension on Cap d’Antibes?

The regime depends on the exact perimeter. In a listed site — the quarters covered by the orders of 3 May 1913 — works require special consent from the prefect or the minister; in a registered site, a prior declaration suffices. We verify the perimeter before studying the project.

Can a seafront property be extended on Cap d’Antibes?

The commune is coastal, and the hundred-metre strip applies with particular sharpness on a narrow headland. The 1913 listings explicitly sought to preserve the exceptional panoramic views for the public and to prevent construction disfiguring the beauty of the site.

Can a pool or a terrace be created on Cap d’Antibes?

Masonry boundary walls and gates are, on the Cap, works in their own right: they form the built front visible from the lane and from the coastal path. An outdoor project is therefore also judged from outside the property.

Expertise · Cap d’Antibes

Extensions & villa fit-outs on Cap d’Antibes

To enlarge without distorting, to elevate without betraying: every extension seems to have always been there. We bring this expertise to exceptional residences on Cap d’Antibes, with the discretion and rigour for which we are known.

From the Cap to La Garoupe, we work at the finest addresses on Cap d’Antibes — a limited number of sites, carried through to perfection.

Pools, pool-houses, orangeries, Mediterranean park landscaping: on Cap d’Antibes, the extension converses with exceptional gardens and the sea close by.

Every enlargement respects the scale of the domain and its green setting, from La Garoupe to Cap Gros, with the discretion owed to our clients.

The Cap area of the remarkable heritage site: read your sector first

The remarkable heritage site of Antibes is a multi-site instrument, and one of its areas is that of the Cap, designated by the letter G. It is divided into a central zone GA, with sectors GA1 around the Garoupe and GA2 on the southern coast; a contact-value zone GB, in four sectors; an accompanying zone GC; and M, the coastal strip. The regulation assigns two explicit objectives to the Cap as a whole: to protect and enhance the architectural and landscape heritage, and to preserve existing densities, in particular the ratios between built and vegetated space. An enlargement project therefore begins by identifying its sector.

For the sector carries figures. To secure the balance between built and planted, the regulation sets a minimum share of open ground planted in full earth and a maximum footprint for construction: in GA1 and GA2, 85 % of full earth minimum, 10 % of circulation maximum, 5 % of built footprint; in GB1, 70 %, 20 % and 10 %; in GB2, 80 %, 13 % and 7 %; in GC, 70 % of full earth minimum. Any project may be refused as soon as it harms the landscape balance of the site. Those three numbers decide the size of a work before a single line is drawn.

What the sector allows: to enlarge, to build, and to what height

The regimes are not the same from one zone to another. In the central zone, new construction is forbidden in principle; only the extension of an existing building is admitted under condition, attached to the main volume or not, and required to harmonise with its massing and appearance. In the accompanying zone, a new construction becomes possible again, provided it does not call into question the perceptions and the landscape quality, and with a ground footprint capped at 10 % of the plot area. Height there is limited to seven metres, measured from the eaves to the lowest point of the construction at natural ground level.

The regulation names a risk explicitly: that the landscape value of the site be altered by constructions arising from plot subdivisions. It does, on the other hand, open a route few owners know of — removing scattered dwellings and rebuilding those areas grouped on a single footprint. It holds to three cumulative conditions: to show that the grouping will not harm the overall landscape quality, to propose compensatory measures improving the vegetation cover of the land unit, and to present a before-and-after floor area balance at a constant square metre. Gaining volume where one wishes it therefore means giving it up elsewhere.

Two legislations on one cape, and the hundred-metre strip

One clarification changes the reading of all that precedes. Classified sites come under legislation of their own and are, as such, excluded from the perimeter of the remarkable heritage site — those of the quarters protected since 1913 as well as that of the maritime public domain, classified by order of 30 October 1958. Two distinct regimes therefore share the Cap: the density tables do not hold where the classified-site regime applies, and one cannot reason about a plot without knowing which of the two it depends on. To this is added coastal law: the hundred-metre strip and the regime of areas close to the shore take on, on a narrow advance into the sea, a particular sharpness.

Then there is the manner. The Cap is a low, broad advance into the sea, without the abrupt relief of the neighbouring peninsulas: properties there sit on a wooded plateau rather than on stepped terraces, on large plots often accompanied by annexes. Enlargement is readily thought of here as a constellation rather than a block — reworking an outbuilding, converting a pavilion, placing a guest suite at a distance from the house. The masonry boundary walls and the gates are works in their own right: they form the built front seen from the lane. Structural and general building work gives the bearing, high-end renovation tunes the house and its annexes, bespoke finishes and interiors give the new volume the material of villégiature. Our crafts on Cap d’Antibes hold within that continuity.