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Heritage classified

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Origin and history

Roseland Abbey, located in Nice in the Alpes-Maritimes, is an eclectic creation of the first half of the 20th century. Originally, the estate was a 17th century country house belonging to the Nice aristocratic family of the Dalmassi. In 1763 Jean-Ange Dalmassi left the property to his cousin, Alexandre Auguste de Lascaris de Vintimille, Count of Castellar. During the French Revolution, the estate was seized, then bought in 1815 by the Jaume family, which exploited it for oil and wine production. In 1878 he was sold to the Russian Count Apraxin.

In 1925, Édouard Lacarde, an antique collector and collector, radically transformed the house by incorporating medieval elements, including a cloister composed of 26 columns of the Ve-VIth centuries from the monastery of the Daurade of Toulouse, as well as remains of the Bonnefont Abbey. He added a chapel and a rose garden, giving the place his current name, Roseland. The Italian garden was set up between 1923 and 1927 by landscape architect Octave Godard, while the house adopted a fantasy Gothic style.

Ranked a Historic Monument in 1996, the Abbey became a cultural place: in 1961, Jean Larcade, son of Edward, organized a Festival of New Realists with artists like Arman and Yves Klein. In 1970, the widow of Édouard Lacarde gave up the residence and part of the gardens to the city of Nice. After decades of aborted projects (including a landscape foundation in 2018), the Conseil départemental des Alpes-Maritimes acquired the site in 2023 to create a climate study centre, avoiding its controversial privatization.

The historic building is now enclaved in a 600-unit residence built in 1968. Its cloister, its ancient columns and its botanical park bear witness to the eclectic taste of the Niçois elites at the beginning of the twentieth century, mixing medieval heritage, Italian art and artistic modernity.

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