Winston Churchill Monument

On March 31, 1956, Roquebrune Cap Martin welcomed with great fanfare Sir Winston Churchill, former Prime Minister of Great Britain, to officially present him with the diploma of honorary citizen. Almost ten years later, on February 24, 1965, one month to the day after Churchill's death, Roquebrune Cap Martin once again honored this illustrious visitor by renaming the old avenues of Monte Carlo and the sea, Avenue Winston Churchill. In a nod to its military past, the semaphore rises a few hundred meters away, hidden in the tops of the pines, as if in ambush, watching over this monument which bears the bust of Churchill in a medallion. Like a lighthouse which imposes its silhouette on all the panoramas on Cap Martin, this semaphore was built on the highest point of the peninsula in 1864 to accommodate the lookouts of the navy. It will be assigned to telegraphy services in the 20th century. Curious about ancient civilizations, I wondered if this building had not been built in place of a lookout post established by the Romans on the Mediterranean rim. I now know that, in a neighboring property, some ruins of a religious building of the monks of Lérins remain. In these ruins, as on the construction of the semaphore, specialists recognize reused stones from a Roman construction