Palais Carnoles

Palais Carnoles stands in Menton, France, as an eighteenth-century palace surrounded by a botanical garden. It began as a summer residence for Monaco’s Grimaldi princes. Its Trianon-inspired design joins two pavilions with a portico and opens broad arches towards the garden. A balustrade crowns the elevations, while Menton artists Bressan, Puppo, and the Vento brothers shaped its decoration.

Records place a priory here in the twelfth century, before Prince Antoine I commissioned the palace on land purchased from the monks of Lérins. Jean Antoine Latour later turned the leisure pavilion into a residence. A new floor divided the central salon, while a double staircase linked the garden with the upper reception room. A baroque hexagonal kiosk keeps a tiled dome and Genoese-style pilasters.

The botanical park follows straight lines and holds many citrus varieties. Sweet oranges, mandarins, kumquats, lemons, and grapefruits grow beside unusual citron forms. Canary Island palms line the main path through the protected historic garden. The city of Menton houses the Museum of Fine Arts inside the former residence. Its permanent collection includes paintings by Raoul Dufy and Max Jacob, plus portraits by Kostia Terechkovitch. A bizzaria citrus combines citron and sour orange in a distinctive chimera.