Le Corbusier's Cabanon and Villa E1027 in Roquebrune
On Cap Martin, between the railway and the sea, stand two houses that people travel to the French Riviera for specifically: Villa E1027, devised by Irish designer Eileen Gray, and Le Corbusier’s wooden cabin of just over thirteen square metres. Since 2016 the cabin has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List, and in the summer of 2026 Roquebrune-Cap-Martin celebrated the tenth anniversary of that inscription.
The house with an encoded name
The villa was built in 1926–1929 by Eileen Gray and the architect and publisher Jean Badovici. By that time Gray was known as a furniture designer rather than an architect, and E1027 became her first house. The name is a cipher made from two names: E — Eileen, 10 — the tenth letter of the alphabet, J (Jean), 2 — the second, B (Badovici), 7 — the seventh, G (Gray).
The house is measured down to the centimetre: built-in cupboards with labelled doors, fold-down shelves, light partitions instead of walls. For it Gray devised objects that are now reissued as twentieth-century classics — the Transat chaise-longue, the Bibendum chair made from quilted rolls and the round glass side table with adjustable height, which is called E1027.
Seven frescoes nobody asked for
In 1938–1939 Le Corbusier, a friend of Badovici and a frequent guest at the house, painted the villa’s walls with seven frescoes. Gray, for whom a white plane was part of the concept, regarded this as the defacement of someone else’s work; by that time she no longer lived there. Three of the frescoes were later lost, the others restored, and one is intentionally kept covered — so that part of the interior remains as the house’s author intended.
The 3.66 by 3.66 hut
Le Corbusier liked the place so much that in 1952 he built his own house next door — the Cabanon, a hut for himself and his wife Yvonne. Its dimensions are 3.66 by 3.66 metres with a height of 2.26; on just over thirteen square metres there is a writing desk, a bed, a washbasin, a toilet and cupboards. The proportions are taken from the “Modulor” — a system of measures the architect derived from the dimensions of the human body. The wooden components were made in Corsica at the Barberis workshop and assembled on site, like a kit.
On 27 August 1965 Le Corbusier went for a swim from the Cabbe beach beneath the property and died in the sea. He is buried nearby, in the Roquebrune cemetery, in a grave of his own design. The hut was completely restored in 2015.
How a private property became a museum
Badovici owned the villa until his death in 1956; in 1960 the house was bought by the Swiss woman Marie-Louise Schelbert, and in 1999 it was acquired by the Conservatoire du littoral — a state organisation that buys up coastline to prevent development. The city paid most of the sum at the time. In the same year the villa was listed as a historic monument. Since 2014 the Cap Moderne association has been carrying out restoration work and returning the house and garden to their 1929 appearance.
The site is not only the two famous houses. Nearby is the tavern L’Étoile de Mer, run by Thomas Rebutato and where Le Corbusier used to have lunch, and the “camping units” — tiny holiday huts designed by the same architect.
Ten years on the UNESCO list
The Cabanon is one of 17 properties in the serial nomination “The Architectural Work of Le Corbusier”, inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2016. In that listing the French hut stands alongside the chapel at Ronchamp and the government district in Chandigarh. The town marked the ten-year anniversary of the inscription on 24 July 2026 with guided tours, children’s workshops, two exhibitions and a concert on Buz beach. “This inscription is the result of thirty years of work,” said at the celebration the former deputy mayor Jean-Louis Dedieu.
How to visit
Visits are possible only with a guide and only by prior reservation; the season runs from April to October; tickets are sold by the Centre des Monuments Nationaux. Groups are small: the house is fragile, the furnishings are authentic. You can walk from Roquebrune-Cap-Martin station along the coastal path, which is named Promenade Le Corbusier.
If you are interested in Riviera architecture, there are two more stories nearby: Grimaldi Castle in Cannes, where a 14th-century fortress became a museum, and the villas of Cap d’Antibes with their Hollywood owners.
Sources: Cap Moderne, Centre des Monuments Nationaux, Roquebrune-Cap-Martin town hall.
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Photo: Guillaume Kremer / Pexels