Czech billionaire Radovan Vitek has bought one of the Côte d'Azur's most desirable residences, the Maeterlinck Palace, for EUR 48 million. The neo-classical mansion with a breathtaking cliff top location near Nice and an unparallelled view over the Mediterranean was the former residence of Noble Prize winning writer Maurice Maeterlinck.

The writer and his wife held now legendary parties in the palace and lived there until their deaths. Later, in the early 90s it was converted into a luxury hotel, which eventually closed in 2008. With 7,000 sqm in three buildings and 3.86 hectares of garden, the palace was built in the 1920s for Le Comte de Milléant.

Vitek, who owns several other properties on the French Riviera, now plans to convert the palace into luxury residences. Vitek said he aimed “To bring about the rebirth of Maeterlinck Palace legend and convert it into a timeless symbol of good taste in the region.”

Vitek, now a real estate investor, started his first venture, importing blankets from Germany soon after the collapse of communism in 1989. He set up a fund called Investicni Privatizacni Fond Boleslavsko A.S. in 1991, then renamed it CPI in 1998 and started to focus mainly on real-estate investing.

Liam Lever, liam@romania-insider.com