SCI MARGUERITE

Superb villa built in 1864 for the Compagnie des Chemins de Fer du Midi (Southern Railway Company) reinterpreting the "Swiss chalet" style popular at the time, Gustave Alaux (1816-1882) designed this house, As with its two neighbors, "Faust" and "Siebel," the name Marguerite was chosen in homage to Charles Gounod (a frequent visitor to Arcachon), whose opera "Faust," premiered in 1859, had been a great success, symbolizing the renewal of French opera. The villa was rented in August 1880 by a very wealthy Russian widow, Baroness Nadezhda von Meck, a patron of the composer Tchaikovsky, whom she never actually met. She stayed there with the seven youngest of her eleven children, her servants and a trio of young musicians, including a pianist of barely eighteen years old, Achille-Claude Debussy, whom she nicknamed "Boussik". At the Villa he would decipher Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony and he would begin a romance with Sonia, the baroness's daughter ... Nowadays it's ground floor is open for holidays rent.