Villefranche-sur-Mer: Why All Navies Wanted This Harbor
At the entrance to Villefranche-sur-Mer, the depth reaches nearly 100 meters. This is enough to accommodate the largest military fleets in the Mediterranean, and has attracted, for seven centuries, all the maritime powers that have passed through the Riviera. Anjou, Savoy, the Russian Empire, the American navy – each has anchored here, for different reasons, with the same conviction: […]
De Antonio Yachts: How a Design Detail Redefined the Day Boat
In 2012, two designers asked a question that no one seemed to be asking: why do outboard motors have to be visible? Marc De Antonio, from Spain, and Stanislas Chmielewski, from Switzerland, had just launched their shipyard in Barcelona. No large factory, no century-old family tradition. Just a conviction: the day boat [...]
Sunset cruise on the French Riviera: the time nobody watches from the right spot
On the French Riviera, sunset is an event. Terraces fill up, beaches linger, phones are raised. Everyone looks in the same direction. Almost no one is in the right place. The right place is the sea, back to the coast, facing west, at the exact moment when the light…
Cannes Film Festival: What the Croisette Doesn't Show
On September 1, 1939, the Cannes Film Festival was scheduled to open its doors for the first time. Delegations had arrived. Films had been selected. Louis Lumière was presiding over the jury. But on that day, German troops entered Poland, and the Festival was canceled. Not a single film had yet been screened. It was not [...]
The world's largest yacht has not yet touched the water!
On May 4, 2026, a 150-meter yacht was unveiled. Glass hull. Star Destroyer silhouette. It doesn't exist. No shipyard, no buyer, no launch date. Just an image published by the British studio ThirtyC to mark Star Wars Day, with a brief as simple as […]
Saint-Tropez by boat: the village that was invented three times
We think we know how Saint-Tropez became Saint-Tropez. Bardot, Vadim, 1956. That's true. But it's only the third version of the story. Saint-Tropez was invented three times. Three times by people who arrived by sea and decided to stay. What the gulf shows from a boat is the sum of [...]
Renting a yacht with or without a skipper: what clients imagine vs. what they really experience
The question comes up almost systematically: skipper or no skipper? Is it cheaper? Are we freer? The idea of bareboating, renting a boat and setting sail alone, without anyone deciding for you, has something seductive about it on paper. In practice, on the French Riviera, […]
Monaco by Boat: The Ruse That Built a Principality
We think we know Monaco. The Rock, the Grimaldis, seven hundred years of dynastic legitimacy. Wealth as the natural order of things. It’s a coherent image. It’s almost entirely false. Monaco was founded by a monk who wasn’t a monk. Saved from bankruptcy by a casino built out of desperation. Reinvented for the […]
Cap d'Antibes by Boat: The Americans Who Invented Summer on the Riviera
There's an idea that everyone accepts without question: the French Riviera summer has always existed. The pine trees, the sun on the rocks, the yachts in front of Eden Roc. As if all of it had always been there. That's not the case. Before 1923, there was no summer on [...]
Monaco Grand Prix by Yacht: The History of the Show Within the Show
The Monaco circuit is 3.337 kilometers long. It's the shortest on the F1 calendar, the slowest on average speed, and by far the most difficult to overtake on. Specialists have been saying for decades that a modern race on this track is a technical aberration, too narrow, too twisty, too set in its ways to produce the spectacle that [...]