An Ajaccio story
Picture Corsica in 1880, and this peninsula, then covered in orchards and maquis.
It was here that Dr Paul Pompeani decided to build a villa. He wanted it grand, in the architectural style of the day and, above all, facing the sea.
A few decades later, the early 20th century brought a new fashion for winter and seaside holidays in Corsica among Europe’s high society.
In the late 1920s, Louis Raibaldi bought Villa Pompeani from the doctor’s heirs, extended it and opened it as a hotel for winter visitors drawn by Ajaccio’s mild climate. The villa became the Hostellerie de la Grande Bleue.
Brochures of the day promised sea bathing, a magnificent garden, an illuminated fountain, a theatre and tea dances.
A family home, family after family
After the Baretti family bought the villa, it briefly became a film studio: the owner’s friendship with the writer and film-maker Marcel Pagnol had more than a little to do with it.
In the 1950s, Madame Baretti-Rosselli transformed the house once more, creating a discreet luxury hotel: Hôtel Les Mouettes.
Under her peerless stewardship, for half a century, a succession of legendary visitors to Ajaccio came to stay, from a fabled diva to crowned heads.
Heartfelt hospitality
In 2006 the Pieri family, already owners of Castel Brando**** in Erbalunga (Cap Corse), took over the hotel, with the eldest son, Jean-Baptiste, at the helm.
Sharing his family’s love of old buildings and places steeped in history, he has worked tirelessly ever since to restore this seaside villa to its full splendour.
Day after day, he has also breathed into it a refined, sincere hospitality rooted in tradition, sharing the best of his island while remaining open to the modern world.
For more than 20 years he has helped to make Les Mouettes a place apart: a contemporary Eden, of its time yet authentically Corsican and timeless.
