Villa Noailles

About this place

Villa Noailles is an early modernist house, built by architect Robert Mallet-Stevens for art patrons Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles, between 1923 and 1927. It is located in the hills above Hyères, in the Var, southeastern France. Charles de Noailles was born in 1891, his wife Marie-Laure in 1902. They were married in 1923. Before their marriage, they became friends of artist-filmmaker Jean Cocteau, and Noailles commissioned a portrait of his wife by Pablo Picasso in 1923. In 1923, they signed a contract with the architect Robert Mallet-Stevens to build a summer villa in the hills above the city of Hyères. Notice how the building presents itself to the surrounding streets or landscape, then compare its public and more intimate spaces. This helps explain how architecture expressed the position, resources and ambitions of the people who commissioned it.