La Villa Arnaga a Cambo-les-Bains

Edmond Rostand came to Cambo in 1900 to take treatments for a pulminary affliction. He had this gorgeous villa built in the Basque style to fit in with the countryside. It took from 1903 to 1906 to build it and the adjoining gardens. Edmond Rostand is a famous French writer who wrote many plays, books, and poetry. Among them are Le Musardises, Les Romanesques, Cyrano de Bergerac, L'Aiglon, and Chantecler. He was a member of the French Academy. I loved touring his loverly gardens and villa.
First one must walk up quite a long tree lined lane. It is just beautiful with lovely trees and flowers everywhere. Then you get into the formal gardens, but just before that is a very large gardeners home with a huge fenced yard full of chickens, ducks, and some other fowl. There are peacocks roaming the gardens and the yard also.

This gazebo is the middle section that faces a large pool and fountains.

Part of the formal gardens. In the spring and summer there are many flowers, but now they are no longer in bloom.

There is a walkway on either side of the gazebo. There are still a few flowers and bushes, but I guess not nearly as pretty as at other times of the year.

The house doesn't look very large from the outside, but once you are inside, you see that it is quite large.

The rooms were all quite elaborately decorated. It was interesting that throughout the house there were lots of animal paintings and drawings, especially chickens. This family must have really liked chickens because in almost each room there was a picture or statue or drawing of a chicken.

The kitchen had tiles with lots of farm animals painted on them; cows, pigs, horses, sheep, and of course chickens. If you click on the picture, you can see a little of the border near the ceiling with the painted tiles.

This s the Chinese room.

The bathroom. Next to the bathroom were a spa room, a massage room, and a hydrotherapy room.

Throughout the house there were beautiful parquet floors.

The view from one of the bedrooms.

A portrait of Edmond.

The stairway.

The children's room had fairy tales painted all around the walls. I wanted to take more pictures, but they came and told me that I couldn't. The house had many lovely things in it. Wish I could have taken more pictures.