Karl Lagerfeld: Dream house in Monaco up for auction

“After two years since the passing of the designer Karl Lagerfeld, his executor has entrusted the task of auctioning off the assets held in the designer’s properties to the company Sotheby’s.

Among these, the most mysterious and renowned is undoubtedly the white cube that stands on the border between France and Monte Carlo, the marvelous Villa La Vigie overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.

Purchased by Karl Lagerfeld in 1988, La Vigie is a celebration of Corinthian columns and alabaster, surrounded by gardens of Mediterranean vegetation and culminating in a terrace of 237 square meters. In its total 600 square meters, the villa hosts six bedrooms, four bathrooms, a billiard room, and a library. The collection housed at La Vigie can therefore only be an invaluable treasure, both in quantity and quality.

In French, “La Vigie” means “lookout” or “sentinel,” a perfect name for a villa overlooking the sea. With high alabaster roofs and a succession of Corinthian columns, La Vigie is located just meters from the Franco-Monegasque border.

The villa was built in 1902 for Sir William Ingram, son of the founder of The Illustrated London News. It is said that Ingram had a series of rare animals and exotic birds roaming freely on the property.

During World War II, the splendor gave way to the German occupation.

In the early 1940s, Villa La Vigie became a lookout point for German troops, who turned the gardens into trenches, covering them with barbed wire and minefields.

It was only in 1988, in fact, that Karl Lagerfeld, who at that time was working on bringing Chanel back into the spotlight, bought La Vigie and completely renovated it.

“It’s the safest place in the world,” Lagerfeld reportedly told W Magazine in 1988. “It’s impossible to approach the house. There is no public road, and you have to pass two gates to enter. It doesn’t even have an address, so no one can write to me when I’m there.”

2021 marks the return of the villa under the spotlight, thanks to the fashion house that made it famous the first time: Chanel.

Chanel’s Spring-Summer 2021 campaign was entirely shot between Monaco and Villa La Vigie. The protagonist is Charlotte Casiraghi, daughter of Princess Caroline and a woman of infinite facets beloved by the Monegasques.

Today, the villa is officially up for auction. Who will be its next guardian?”