France · Restored
Château Grimaldi
Château Grimaldi in Cagnes-sur-Mer is a medieval castle built on a hilltop and long associated with the Grimaldi family; it now houses a municipal museum and exhibition space. The surviving structure retains its medieval defensive silhouette while containing principal reception rooms, a great hall and a chapel with painted ceilings.
Its prime
1625
Today
Restored
As it stood in 1625
What Château Grimaldi looked like in its prime.
Perched on a hill above the town, the castle is built of pale local stone and dominated by a large square keep with a projecting machicolated cornice and crenellated battlements, flagpoles rising from its roof. The stronghold sits within high curtain walls and is built around a triangular courtyard; beneath and around it dense clusters of terracotta‑roofed houses, cypress trees and stone terraces tumble down the slope toward the plain.
Its story
The story of Château Grimaldi.
Laugier de Nice to the Count of Provence, 1033–1250
A castle stood at Cagnes early enough to be named in a charter of 1033, when it belonged to Laugier de Nice, viscount of Nice, and his wife Odile de Provence. In 1220, amid the struggles that set the nobility of eastern Provence against the count of Provence, Romée de Villeneuve seized the castle and took a share of its lands to found Villeneuve. The count of Provence acquired the land of Cagnes from the Villeneuve in 1250.
Rainier Grimaldi, Admiral of France, from 1309
In 1309 Rainier I Grimaldi (1267–1314), co-lord and then lord of Monaco, was made lord of Cagnes-sur-Mer by Robert of Anjou, king of Naples and count of Provence. Philip the Fair titled him Admiral of France. On ground said to have carried Greek and then Roman occupation before him, Rainier raised a heavy fort of river pebbles intended for one thing only, watch and defence: a keep and towers carried on machicolations and topped with crenellations. The castle is built around a triangular courtyard.
It stayed with the Grimaldi d'Antibes, a branch of the house of Grimaldi, for close to five hundred years. The castle later served as the residence of the governors of the province.
Jean-Henri Grimaldi's Italian House, about 1620
Around 1620 Jean-Henri Grimaldi d'Antibes turned the medieval fort into an elegant house in the Italian manner and kept a lavish household in it. He was titled marquis de Courbons and baron de Cagnes in 1646, under the protection of Louis XIII and the king's minister Cardinal Richelieu. He added an outer staircase and rebuilt the interior, ringing the inner courtyard with tiers of loggias. Through the reign of Louis XIII the principal rooms were made more comfortable and redecorated in the taste of the day.
The audience hall took a baroque trompe-l'oeil ceiling of the Fall of Phaëton, finished in the 1620s by the Genoese painter Giulio Benso, who also frescoed the Palais Lascaris at Nice; the work is sometimes given instead to Giovanni Battista Carlone. The chapel ceiling was painted with folk scenes.
False Coin and d'Artagnan's Search, 1707–1710
Between 1707 and 1709 Honoré III Grimaldi, marquis de Cagnes, found his money by making false coin. Counterfeiting was common enough in the region that the intendant Cardin Lebret (1675–1734) resolved to act, with the help of the comte d'Artagnan, Joseph de Montesquiou, who commanded the king's troops in Provence between 1708 and 1710. On 5 April 1710 d'Artagnan searched the castle at Cagnes and found the coining equipment in the cellar.
From the Revolution to the Town's Museum
The Revolution drove the Grimaldi out of the town. They took refuge first at Nice, and Sauveur Gaspard Grimaldi (1734–1816), son of Honoré IV Grimaldi (1701–1743), went on to Genoa. The castle was left abandoned, then put to use as barracks and afterwards as a hospital. A private buyer took it on in 1875 and restored it, the municipality bought it in 1939, and in 1944 its underground rooms served as an air-raid shelter. It opened as a museum in 1946.
The castle was classified as a historical monument by an order of 15 April 1948, with two further parcels classified by decree of 5 May 1948. The city of Cagnes owns it as the Château Musée Grimaldi, holding the town's museum of modern art and ethnography, a museum devoted to the olive, and a collection of portraits of the cabaret singer Suzy Solidor that includes one by Tamara de Lempicka. It also shows contemporary art from around the world.
Step inside
7 places to explore in 1625.
The record describes 7 distinct spots at Château Grimaldi, including 3 interiors: great hall with painted ceiling, chapel with painted ceiling, principal reception room (louis xiii redecorated). Create your own photoreal reconstruction and explore every one, more scenes means more rooms, more angles, and more of the place to stand in.
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Clans who held Château Grimaldi.
The families that held Château Grimaldi for a decade or more across its history, follow a name to its clan.
Grimaldi
Built in 1309 by Rainier Grimaldi, Lord of Cagnes and admiral of France, a distant ancestor of the ruling house of Monaco.
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