Audrey Hepburn’s Swiss villa on market for CHF19 million

The Swiss villa owned by screen icon Audrey Hepburn has hit the market. The 18th century farmhouse in the scenic village of Tolochenaz, Switzerland, around a 30-minute drive from Geneva airport, was owned by Hepburn from 1963 until her death in 1993—she is buried in the town’s cemetery.
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In 2001, Hepburn’s sons sold their mother’s rural retreat to Katharina Beaujolin and her husband, Jean-Marc Beaujolin, the former chairman of import-export business Europ Continents Services SA.
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“The house is called ‘La Paisible’ which means ‘peaceful place,’ and it really is a peaceful place. It has quite the amazing atmosphere,” says Katharina Beaujolin, speaking exclusively to Bloomberg about the sale. She says she and her husband were looking for a large property to bring up their six children and they fell in love with the house for the calm feeling it exuded and its generous size—its previous owner being a Hollywood legend was a fun bonus.
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“When I was at boarding school a long time ago, I remember that I had lots of photos of Audrey Hepburn on my wall from her films, she really was my favorite actress,” says Beaujolin. There’s a plaque with Hepburn’s name on the exterior privacy wall of the house, and she says tourists would occasionally stop by and snap a photo or two outside, but it was never intrusive.
“It’s actually quite touching, because she died more than 30 years ago now, and that people still want to see where she lived shows how much she meant to people,” adds Beaujolin.

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Twenty-four years later, she and her husband have listed La Paisible with Knight Frank for CHF19 million ($20.8 million). For that, a buyer gets a 12-bedroom, eight-bathroom villa with 10,800 square feet of space on a four-acre lot. The house is close to the centre of town, with a privacy wall surrounded by hedges on one side, and a large open space of parkland and trees on the other, with views toward the mountains.
The Beaujolins say the house was a joy to live in. “All of our kids went to school and university here and were quite happy,” she adds. “You have very good schools, excellent universities, the lake and the mountains—what else do you want?” she says. The house is a 20-minute drive from the city of Lausanne and close to the shores of Lake Geneva.
Now that all their children have grown, Beaujolin says the country estate is just too large for them. “We’ve decided to do some downsizing, because it’s just the two of us in this big house, and it felt like the right moment to make a change.”
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