It was Viviane Romance, one of France’s greatest actresses between the 1930s and 1950s, who first spent a fortune on the Château de Saint Jeannet in an attempt to modernize the 11th-century building with views over the French Riviera.
However, after her death in 1991, the building near Nice was abandoned until 2001 when Jon Acevski, a British film producer, came along. “It’s a place for … royalty, wealthy Russians, big pop stars, film stars, the studios, corporations,” he told Variety in 2009, after paying some $1.7 million for the site, telling local media that he had spent far more on renovation work.
