During the 19th and early 20th centuries, the village was a centre of floral production, producing lavender, roses and jasmine for the perfumeries in nearby Grasse. Mougins is a living village, where both the ancient buildings and the 19th-century houses are inhabited as they have always been.
The Musée d’Art Classique de Mougins, also known as MACM, is the Mougins Museum of Classical Art. The museum displays within the same space ancient, neoclassical, modern, and contemporary art in order to highlight the influence of the ancient world on influential artists from Sir Peter Paul Rubens to Damien Hirst. Located at the entrance of the village of Mougins, the private museum holds a collection of over 800 works over four floors. The MACM focuses on the reciprocal influences of the ancient civilisations of Egypt, Rome, and Greece, and the continuity of the Graeco-Roman legacy through to the present. Its collection includes artefacts from ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, as well as drawings, paintings, and sculptures by Paul Cézanne, Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso, Auguste Renoir, Jean Cocteau, Salvador Dalí, Raoul Dufy, Antony Gormley, Keith Haring, Damien Hirst, Henri Matisse, Henry Moore, Francis Picabia, Marc Quinn, Auguste Rodin, and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec.
Mougins has an important culinary history, with chef Roger Vergé, having owned two restaurants in the village: L’Amandier et Le Moulin de Mougins. In 1969, Vergé came to Mougins. A true pioneer: he dusted off and lightened French cuisine.He invented the “Cuisine du Soleil” (Sunshine Cuisine) that he introduced across the globe, contributing to the growing reputation of French cuisine. He was awarded 5 stars by the Michelin Guide for his two restaurants.
L’Amandier: Roger Vergé owned L’Amandier for over twenty years, while also training another of the world’s greatest contemporary chefs, Alain Ducasse, who worked for Roger Vergé in Mougins from 1977-1981, and ultimately worked as a chef here. The first floor of L’Amandier is still known as ‘Les Salles des Moines’ (The Monk’s Hall) as it served as court house for the Monks of Saint Honorat in the Middle Ages. By the 19th century, this building had become a mill, pressing flowers grown on the hillsides of Mougins, to supply rose, jasmine and lavender oil for the perfumeries of the nearby village of Grasse.
Le Moulin de Mougins: At Le Moulin de Mougins Roger Vergé hosted the very first amfAR Gala, a charity event to which celebrities flocked, contributing to the town’s gastronomic reputations. Consequently, in the 1970s, Mougins boasted 7 Michelin stars and became the village with the most stars in France. A friend of the arts and artists, over the years Vergé transformed his restaurant into a living museum with works by his friends César Baldaccini, Arman, Folon or Tobiasse.
In order to pay homage to the chef Roger Vergé, in 2006, the Mayor of Mougins, Richard Galy, decided to create the very first International Gastronomy Festival, the ‘Les Étoiles de Mougins’.
Since 2012, Mougins has been the only town in France to be awarded the “Ville et Métier d’Art” label for gastronomy.
