The pine-shaded playground of the Parisian smart set, Cap Ferret has been evacuated as wildfires creep ever closer. Can it be saved?

By Joseph Bullmore

Benoît Bartherotte is the owner of perhaps the most beautiful house in the world—a broad, caramel-wood cabin at the very tip of the peninsula of Cap Ferret, shaded on all sides by wide verandas and balconies, and sheltered from the gentle sea-spray by fig trees, palms, and towering stone pines. But he won’t be spending much time in it this weekend.

Instead, Bartherotte—a former fashion designer turned self-appointed guardian of France’s most coveted spit of land—is busy constructing a vast trench, a firebreak some 200 feet wide, using a trio of heavy-duty forklifts. “We’ve been working nonstop since the machines arrived at noon to protect the Pointe,” he told a local news channel on Saturday. “They’re our machines, and our men.” READ ON