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In Marseille’s Roucas Blanc hills, high above the snaking corniche road, Villa Santa Lucia of 1867 overlooks the Mediterranean sea. Of the house itself, suffice to say that its design gradually evolved over the decades, with a chalet-style wooden lambrequin frieze being added later on in the 19th century. What’s most striking about the property, however, is its steeply sloping garden of seven terraces layered with rocailles, organic cement compositions that creatively, often humorously, blend botany, geology and romance. Now, as of March 2025, France’s ministry of culture has officially designated it a jardin remarquable.
This largest cohesive expression of the craft in Marseille, and possibly the region, was created by Italian ‘rocker’ Gaspard Gardini over two years between 1892 and 1894. In the tropical and Mediterranean garden of palms, succulents and fragrant flowers, the rocailles unfurl beneath the villa in a scenographic ensemble of caves lined with stalactites and stalactites and winding grotto corridors. There are fairytale-style false doors and windows, tree trunks engraved with impressions of bark, a Christmas crèche with a mechanical windmill, and an enigmatic soldier entrenched behind a fort.
‘No separation exists between the vegetation and the rocailles,’ says Elise Renard, a sustainable-development consultant whose family has owned the villa since 1984. She explains that the craft has been mostly overlooked in part because of its proud informality and stylistic ‘naivety’. ‘Rockers’ rarely left behind formal records of the work and its inspiration. ‘Of course they would be commissioned,’ she says, ‘yet they followed their own personal expression and liked to surprise visitors with little objects.’
In the book Les Rocailles: Une Architecture Oubliée (Rockeries: A Forgotten Architecture; Mémoire, 2014), author Yves Gauthey writes, ‘These cement shapers, masons, jack-of-all-trades, were real artisan–artists in love with creativity.’ Their playful approach even entailed leaving tools or hats embedded in the cement, inventing plant species, strange hybrid animals and adding false repairs to false ruins. He describes the rocailles vividly as ‘liquid stone’ and ‘a unique invention in osmosis with its site’.
From the cool caves, one can then climb up to a rocaille belvedere clad in imitation bamboo. Such an open-sided upper gallery was a popular status symbol in the 19th century, allowing owners to view the cargo boats and social activity beyond the boundary of their property. It also had other purposes: ‘As a kid I wanted to make my bedroom there,’ says Elise.
Rocaille has its roots in the 16th-century grottos of the Italian Renaissance, which were made with shells, stones, bones and broken glass. During the reign of Louis XV (1715–74), the decoratively organic Rococo style flourished alongside growing knowledge of the natural sciences. Stylised acanthus leaves and marine motifs appeared in interiors and on objects. Then, in the 19th century, the new material of Portland cement, offering creative freedom, was adopted by ‘rockers’, and the craft became popular in France between 1870 and 1914, until it largely fell into oblivion, being considered bad taste.
‘Let’s retrace these city dwellers in search of rustic utopias in cement,’ writes Gauthey, whose book is an enchanting product of (among other sites) walks through the steep, winding roads and staircases of Roucas Blanc, discovering hidden tableaux along pathways, gateways and façades. When Villa Santa Lucia’s rocailles were commissioned, Marseille was an industrialising city, a fifth of whose population was Italiann. Around this time, suburbs were established in the Roucas Blanc hills as newly wealthy industrialists built romantic, historically informed residences with colonial and exotic tendencies, such as Château Talabot, Château Berger and Villa Valmer.
During this era, Villa Santa Lucia (which had 15 owners before the Renards) was developed into a grand villa with an oak-panelled entrance hall. A garden by Parisian landscaper Tobie Loup de Viane was later added in the 1970s. Yet the Renard family are the longest inhabitants of the villa, having celebrated 40 years of ownership in 2024. Elise and her sister live there today, preserving their father, Marseille native Jean-Léopold Renard’s, ‘project of a lifetime’.
A maritime lawyer by trade, Mr Renard spent his spare time cultivating the gardens with collections of trees and plants. He commissioned restoration work on the belvedere from rocker Nicolas Gilly (who added his own surprise, a little snake, to one of the balustrades). His efforts were awarded with the special prize of the Prince Louis de Polignac Foundation in 2009, and thanks to his commitment, in 2015, the villa and its gardens were registered as a historical monument and later classified in 2020.
After living in Bali for many years, Elise returned to the villa and now feels very close to him, inheriting his approach to its preservation. ‘My father always said that a garden has to be visited once a day. Now, like my father, I too closely observe the plants. As I grow older, my passion for botanics grows. When I start to work there, I can’t stop myself.’
An adventurous traveller, Mr Renard filled the house with antiques collected from Asia and the Middle East. The ‘Oriental’ living room has a wooden canopy from Morocco, a Syrian chest with a shell mosaic, a puppet from Rajasthan and a late 19th-century Buddha from Cambodia. The provenance of many pieces remains a mystery; Elise is slowly researching and archiving the objects. In the process of learning more, she has gradually inherited his passion: ‘Now I also don’t like to buy new things, even clothes and objects.’
The luminous dining room hosts a celebration of joyful Barbotine pottery that Mr Renard collected over 30 years, with colourful organic flourishes that nod to the Rococo roots of the garden motifs. A delicate Murano-glass chandelier hangs from the ceiling and Elise displays watercolours of the house painted by Indonesian artist Herdi Tirto. The family eats breakfast here everyday and loves to entertain friends: ‘Every time we set the table it’s never the same, because there is always something new to use.’
The Renard family has welcomed the public to visit Villa Santa Lucia and its gardens since 2017. Elise hosts popular tours seasonally and co-ordinates with national heritage events such as France’s Rendez-vous aux Jardins in June, and lays on educational opportunities for schools, associations and companies. Her and her family’s efforts to celebrate the rocailles are part of a wider campaign to preserve the heritage and environment of Roucas Blanc, a neighbourhood in which new development and destruction of the landscape, including the felling of old trees, risk destabilising the terroir.
Rocaille is a craft that combines interests in both modernity and the landscape, creatively fusing and blurring the boundaries between the natural and the man-made. Its sheer presence has played a role in preserving Villa Santa Lucia’s layered garden and retaining the landscape of the hills. Mr Renard’s care has been a huge contribution to this, but also inspired the behaviour and habits of a new generation.
In 2025, the garden will be open to the public Sunday to Wednesday, 1 July to 7 September, 8–2. Visit Instagram @villasanta_lucia_marseille
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