The Casamaures villa is an oriental masterpiece from the 19th century, inspired by Moroccan architecture, near the city of Grenoble, in southeastern France. Passing through many owners, the villa was eventually saved by Christiane Guichard, who managed to enlist it as a historic landmark and worked for four decades on restoring it.
Guichard faced "a double challenge, to save the villa and revive it with creativity," reported AFP.
The 60-year-old owner, known as "Mrs. Casamaures," noticed that the villa, built in 1855 on the foothills of La Chartreuse Mountains in Saint-Martin-le-Vinoux, "has always beamed with life and made a great gathering place for the public."
The Casamaures stands unique among the other villas in that region near the French Alps. It has a sophisticated design with its oriental architecture consisting of arcades, arabesque, mashrabiyas, and huge windows with colored glass.
Overseeing a roofed 9-meter-long winter garden full of oriental antiquities, a part of its wooden façade was somehow transferred to the Turkish pavilion at the Exposition Universelle of 1855.
The villa also oversees gardens housing exotic plants and solar timepieces.
But how was an oriental palace established in the suburbs of Grenoble? The general context of that era allowed it, according to Béatrice Besse, art historian and novelist who recently wrote the biography of the villa's founder Joseph Jullien, a merchant from Grenoble known as Cochard.
The historian explains that the phase that followed Bonaparte's explorative trip to Egypt "promoted the beauty of this country," and this interest expanded later to include all that is related to the Ottoman Empire.
Grenoble was the most affected by this wave especially since it hosted Egyptologist Jean-François Champollion and Scientist Joseph Fourier. This orientalist influence was also reflected in architecture.
Although mystery surrounds the life of Cochard, he certainly never traveled to the East. All he wanted from the construction of this villa was to impress the bourgeoisie of Grenoble and build "a reputation for himself."
