Villa Cavrois

Robert Mallet-Stevens built this for a textile industrialist between 1929 and 1932, and the brief was total: he designed the house, the furniture, the lighting, the fittings and the garden as one work, in yellow Norwegian brick over a long horizontal plan of about eighteen hundred square metres, with underfloor heating, a telephone system, radio wiring and a lift. After the family left it was subdivided, then abandoned in 1987, stripped by looters and squatted, its marble and fittings sold off. The state bought it in 2001 and spent fourteen years restoring it, tracking down original elements and remaking what could not be found; it reopened in 2015.

What you actually see

• The unified design - architecture, furniture and fittings by one hand.
• The yellow brick exterior - a long horizontal composition with a tower.
• The restored interiors - marble, wood and metal remade or recovered.
• The garden and pool - the grounds laid out as part of the design.

When to go

Year-round; the villa closes on Mondays. It is largely indoors. Guided tours run at set times and give considerably more than a self-guided walk through empty rooms.

Honest expectations

The house is deliberately shown sparsely furnished, which some find cold. Access without a car is a metro plus bus. Photography rules vary by room.

Nearby

Roubaix and La Piscine museum lie south; Lille is southwest.