The villa La Mauresque is located in cap Ferrat (Alpes-Maritimes) and was remodeled in 1927 by Henri Delmotte, Marcel Guilgot, and the American architect Barry Dierks (1899–1960) to serve as the main residence of the British novelist Somerset Maugham.

Around 1900, the former missionary and chaplain to Leopold II, King of the Belgians, Félix Charmettant (1844–1921), purchased a parcel of land (4 hectares (9.9 acres)) on the newly subdivided peninsula of cap Ferrat.

In 1927, the author Somerset Maugham purchased the property and commissioned Henri Delmotte, Marcel Guilgot, and the young American architect Barry Dierks to eliminate the villa's original neo-oriental elements, to classicize the façades and patio, and to modernize the layout by creating a staircase.

Becoming a near-obligatory stop for the literary and Riviera society, La Mauresque, from the point of Maugham's acquisition, received most of the celebrities who visited the Riviera: Winston Churchill, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Lord Beaverbrook and the Aga Khan mingled with such literary figures as T. S. Eliot, H. G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling, Ian Fleming, Noël Coward and even Virginia Woolf.

The façades and the interior layout were modified – while retaining the classic style – at this time by the French architect Marcel Guilgot.