Elton John's House

Elton John has filled arenas since 1970 and closed out his Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour in 2023. This is the house he calls “the summer house,” big enough to pick out from the Promenade des Anglais below.

The villa went up in the 1920s, and People says it began as an artists’ colony. It kept the rounded arcades, the balconies, and a tower room that looks straight down onto the Mediterranean.

Nobody built on this hill until 1856, when Colonel Robert Smith bought 22 hectares of bare rock from the city for 10,000 francs. His Château de l’Anglais, styled after Mughal palaces, drew the villas that followed.

The Villefranche road opened the slopes in 1862, and from 1867 Prosper Demontzey planted the Aleppo pines that still cover them. After 1920 the big estates were carved into subdivisions, with avenue Jean Lorrain cut in 1927.

Elton bought in the 1990s and had decorators Fred Dilger and Monique Gibson keep the rooms white, “like an empty canvas,” so the Warhol above his bed carries the color. The exterior went from pink to yellow after 1997.

Nice made him an honorary citizen in 1997 at a ceremony hosted by mayor Jacques Peyrat with Prince Albert of Monaco present. In 2001 the city had him open its Palais Nikaïa concert hall.

In August 2019 Prince Harry and Meghan brought 3-month-old Archie here for a private holiday. When the press attacked their private jet, Elton tweeted that he had supplied the flight and paid to offset its carbon.