Two pools, a skate park, a converted church and a room straight out of Pirates of the Caribbean. Plenty of stars buy a house in the South of France. Very few buy an entire village. In 2001, at the height of his fame and while in a relationship with Vanessa Paradis, Johnny Depp did exactly that.
The property sits in Plan-de-la-Tour, in the hills about 17 miles from Saint-Tropez. When he bought it, it was a derelict 18th-century hamlet of stone buildings on roughly 37 acres, according to The Telegraph, as republished by Gulf News. Over the following years, he reportedly spent more than $10 million turning it into a private world.
What the Renovation Created
The scale is closer to a small resort than a family home. Lifestyle Asia reports more than 10,000 square feet of living space across the village, with 15 bedrooms and 14 bathrooms in total. The main house alone measures about 4,300 square feet, with five bedrooms and an art studio.
Around it, Depp added two swimming pools, a gym, a skate park built for his children, Lily-Rose and Jack, a café and a village square for outdoor dining. There are guest cottages, a workshop, staff quarters and a wine cellar. One of the most photographed details is a former church turned into a guesthouse, where the old confessional became a wardrobe.
The Pirate Touch
Depp reportedly decorated much of the village himself, and it shows. One room in the main house has a Pirates of the Caribbean motif, with skulls and brightly colored scarves across the walls and furniture, according to The Telegraph. Times of India describes a pirate-themed wine cellar as one of the estate’s signature spaces.
The style elsewhere is bohemian rather than polished: stone walls, worn wood, collected art and furniture that looks lived in. It is less a showpiece than a very personal hideaway, built by someone who clearly enjoyed the process.
A Hideaway That Has Been Hard to Sell
After his relationship with Paradis ended, Depp put the village on the market in 2015 for about $26 million, including furniture, books, artworks and personal belongings, with Sotheby’s International Realty France. According to Lifestyle Asia, the price was raised the following year to $65 million without finding a buyer, then relisted at $55 million in 2021.
Unique properties like this are notoriously difficult to price. There are only so many buyers looking for a private hamlet with a skate park and a converted church, and fewer still who want to live with another person’s taste stamped on every wall.
Why It Still Fascinates
Twenty-five years after he first bought it, the village remains one of the strangest and most charming celebrity properties in Europe. It is a snapshot of a particular moment in Depp’s life, a family retreat built far from Hollywood, full of the eccentric details fans associate with him.
In 2001, Johnny Depp bought an abandoned French village. Over $10 million later, it had become a private kingdom with pools, an art studio, a skate park and a wine cellar fit for a pirate, and it still has the power to make people stop scrolling.