Famous writer Maurice Maeterlinck, author of numerous books among which Pelléas and Mélisande, the Life of the bees, the Intelligence of the flowers, Nobel prize winner in 1911, ennobled in 1932, settled down in the South, in Grasse at first, then in Nice, in the district of Les Baumettes in the villa the Bees, which he leaved in 1935 for Orlamonde palace, the luxurious house overlooking the sea, above the Cape of Nice. The setting seems solemn and theatrical thanks to the hudgeness of the rooms supported by colonnades, to the porticoes which frame the winter garden, to the furniture at the same time Dutch and Art déco, to the ancient pictures, to the Florentine marquetries... There he received famous artists of his time, Claude Debussy, Eric Satie, André Gide, Roger Martin duGard, Jules Romains*... His wife, native of Nice, Renée Dahon ( 1893-1969 ), survived him twenty years in the vast palace today transformed into a luxury hotel.
Ralph SCHOR
