There is a house on the French Riviera you can only reach on foot.
You follow a coastal path that clings to the rock face between Roquebrune and Cap-Martin. The sea is below you. Pines press in from above. The air smells of salt and dry stone and something resinous you can’t quite name. And then, around a bend in the path, a white shape appears — low, horizontal, as quiet as a held breath.
That house has been there since 1929. It was built by a woman named Eileen Gray. And almost nobody talked about her for decades.
I am not writing about her today because of that injustice ,though it is one, and it matters. I am writing about her because of what she understood.
Eileen Gray understood that living by the Mediterranean is, I think, the most honest to live it.
Not: where do you want to live. But: how.
She Read the Land Before She Touched It
In 1925, Eileen found a cliffside plot on the Côte d’Azur with her partner, the architect Jean Badovici. She had no formal architecture training. What she had was something rarer: a refusal to begin without understanding.
She spent the next three years studying that site before anything was built. She walked it at different hours of the day. She tracked where the sun arrived in the morning and where it left in the evening. She noted which direction the wind came from, and when. She looked at the rock, the terracing, the way the land fell towards the water.
She was asking the questions that matter. Not ‘how big can I build?’ Not ‘what will the view look like from the terrace?’ But: what does this place actually do? What is its logic? What kind of life does it want to hold?
That is not a romantic way of thinking about property. It is the most rigorous way.
A house that doesn’t understand its site is a beautiful object placed in the wrong conversation.
The Mediterranean Light Is Not a Feature — It’s an Argument
The villa Eileen built — E.1027, a coded name woven from their intertwined initials — is a conversation between a building and its landscape.
Its south-facing facade opens entirely to the sea. Floor-to-ceiling windows. Not because of the view — though the view is extraordinary — but because of the light. Mediterranean light at eight in the morning is not the same as Mediterranean light at noon, or at six in the evening, or in January. Eileen knew this. She positioned every room around that knowledge.
The L-shaped plan creates natural shade and cross-ventilation. The exterior walls are blue on the sea side, ochre on the land side — the exact colours of the water and the dry rock below. No decorator chose those colours. The landscape chose them.
Inside, the furniture is entirely hers. Designed for this house, for this climate, for this specific way of being by the sea. Tables that fold. Beds that pivot. Drawers built to stay shut in heavy seas. A spiral staircase that rises to the guest room like a line of thought completing itself.
And on the walls, painted by hand in her own handwriting:
‘Entrez lentement.’ Enter slowly.
‘Beau temps.’ Good weather.
‘Défense de rire.’ No laughing.
She had opinions. She had wit. She had, above all, a very clear idea of the life a house by the sea was supposed to hold — and she built it for this.
E.1027 is not a modern house that faces the sea. It is a house that thinks about the sea — at every hour, in every season, from every room.
Comfort Is Not a Compromise — It Is the Point
Eileen was part of the modernist movement, but she disagreed with some of its hardest edges. In 1929, she and Badovici published a manifesto together — De l’Éclectisme au doute — in which they argued that architecture had to serve not just function, but warmth. Not just efficiency, but intimacy. Not just structure, but spirit.
She wrote: ‘Each person, even in a small house, must be able to remain free and independent.’
She was talking about space planning. She was also talking about something much harder to draw on a blueprint: the feeling of being at home. Really at home — not performing domesticity, not managing a beautiful backdrop, but actually living, quietly and well, in a place that fits you.
That distinction — between a house that looks like Mediterranean living and a house that actually delivers it, is one I think about constantly.
Mediterranean coast is full of beautiful properties. Terracotta and white render and bougainvillea and views that make your chest tighten. And many of them, seen in morning light in July, feel completely, undeniably right.
And then October arrives. Or a Thursday in February. And the house shows you what it actually is.
Orientation off. Ventilation an afterthought. The terrace facing west, away from the morning. The main bedroom catching the afternoon heat with nowhere for it to go. The sea. That sea — invisible from the kitchen, the room where you actually spend your time.
Eileen spent three years making sure none of that would happen. Most buyers spend three hours. The Mediterranean is patient. It will wait for you to notice the difference.
She Was Unique. The World Was Slow to See It.
Eileen was self-taught, private, and worked mostly outside the circles where reputations were made and kept. Le Corbusier, a friend of Badovici’s, and who visited E.1027 several times in the late 1930s, painted eight large murals directly onto her white interior walls without her permission. He thought they improved them. She did not agree.
For years, the house was discussed as part of his story. As context for his Cabanon, built nearby in 1952. As background.
Eileen Gray did not receive real recognition until she was ninety years old.
Ninety.
H Even if her work, the work itself, never needed anyone to recognise it. E.1027 was right in 1929 and it is right now. The sea knew. The light knew. The walls knew.
Recognition catches up with good work eventually. The Mediterranean keeps no score.
She built something true, in a place she understood completely. That is enough. It turns out it is also enough to last a century.
E.1027 Today: Worth the Walk
After Eileen left, the house had a difficult century. Subsequent owners, war damage, the original furniture sold at auction in the early nineties, the building close to ruin.
In 1999 the French state purchased it and began the long process of restoration. In July 2021, E.1027 opened to the public. Part of the Cap Moderne site that also includes Le Corbusier’s Cabanon, the Étoile de Mer restaurant, and five small camping units he designed nearby. Visits are guided, by prior booking only, between April and November.
The furniture is carefully made replica. The originals are gone. But stand in that house, with the sea behind the glass and the late afternoon light arriving exactly where Eileen calculated it would, and the thinking is all still there. You can feel it in every room.
One last detail: Le Corbusier drowned in the sea in front of E.1027 in August 1965. He is buried in Roquebrune, a few hundred metres from the house.
The Mediterranean, in the end, puts things in their proper place.
Visit: Visist E1027 Guided tours, April to November, booking essential.
The Question Eileen Asked. The Question you should Ask.
When I think about mediterranean life style; I keep coming back to Eileen Gray standing on a clifftop in 1925, before anything was built, asking: what does this place actually do?
What does the light look like at seven in the morning? Where does the wind come from in October? Which room will you live in, not just photograph? What does the terrace feel like in January?
These are not complicated questions. They are just questions most people don’t stop long enough to ask.
These questions should be ask. Site by site, hour by hour, season by season. The same rigour Eileen brought to that cliffside in 1925, applied to every property we work with on the Costa Blanca today.
A house by the Mediterranean is not a backdrop. It is a negotiation. And those who get it right are always the ones who understood the land before they signed anything.
Eileen knew. You know too.
— Raquel
P.S. If you’ve ever stood on a coastal site and felt that pull — the one that says ‘this is the one’ before you’ve even looked at the paperwork — I’d love to know what you saw. The light? The angle of the view? The way the air felt different from the terrace? Those instincts are almost always right. The question is whether the house is right too. That’s where we come in.
FAQ
What is E.1027?
E.1027 — also known as the Maison en bord de mer — is a modernist villa designed and built by Eileen Gray between 1926 and 1929, in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin on the French Riviera. The name is a cipher of the initials of Eileen Gray and her partner Jean Badovici. It is listed as a French national historic monument and is considered one of the key works of early modernist architecture.
Why is E.1027 considered important in architecture?
Because it does something rare: it applies the rigour of modernism without abandoning warmth, intimacy or the specifics of the landscape it sits in. Eileen Gray studied the site for three years before building — the orientation, the light, the wind, the colour of the rock — and every architectural decision follows from that study. It is a house that understands its place completely. That is still unusual. It was extraordinary in 1929.
What does E.1027 have to do with how to choose a home by the sea?
Everything. Eileen Gray’s starting question was not ‘how big?’ or ‘what will it look like?’ — it was ‘how does this place actually work?’ She wanted to understand the light at every hour, the ventilation in every season, the relationship between each room and the landscape outside it. That is the question anyone buying property on the Mediterranean coast should be asking. Most don’t. The ones who do end up with houses they love in February as much as August.
Can you visit E.1027?
Yes. Since July 2021, E.1027 has been open to the public as part of the Cap Moderne site, which also includes Le Corbusier’s Cabanon and the Étoile de Mer restaurant. Visits are guided, by prior booking only, from April to November. The site is accessible only on foot via the coastal path. Bookings and information at capmoderne.com
What was the relationship between Eileen Gray and Le Corbusier?
Le Corbusier was a close friend of Jean Badovici and visited E.1027 several times in the late 1930s. During one visit — with Badovici’s permission but without Gray’s — he painted eight large murals onto the white interior walls. Gray never reconciled herself to them. He later built his own small cabin, the Cabanon, a few metres from the villa, and drowned in the sea in front of E.1027 in August 1965. The murals have been restored as part of the building’s history.
What is the SUNseekers approach to buying property on the Mediterranean coast?
We read a site the way Eileen Gray read hers — before anything else. Orientation, light, ventilation, aspect, the way the land sits in relation to the sea and the prevailing winds. We ask the questions that determine whether a property actually works as a life, not just as a purchase. If you are thinking about buying on the Costa Blanca, that is where we start.