The vast mansion where Charlie Chaplin spent his last 24 years is to be turned into a museum dedicated to his life and the history of cinema in the 20th century.
Nine miles out of Lausanne, the mansion in English colonial style with its white colonades, set in a magnificent wooded park of 40 acres, was where Chaplin chose to settle in 1953 with his wife Oona and their eight children. From the terrace you can see Lake Geneva and the Alps in the distance.
An agreement was signed this week by the Charlie Chaplin museum foundation to sell the Ban manor house to Luxembourg investors to transform it into a museum recreating the magic universe of the beloved Little Tramp. The project is expected to cost 21 million euros.
"We have got massive archives, interviews, films and family photos and his first contracts, which we are going to put on display in a dynamic way," Canadian Yves Durand, a Chaplin enthusiast involved in setting up the museum, told AFP.
The former staff quarters are to be turned into a 200-seat cinema while tapes of Chaplin talking about the secrets of his art will be played to bring alive displays in some of the rooms of the house.
Philippe Meylan, the museum's promoter and architect, said: "We plan to put the furniture back where it was when the family was living here." In the salon the grand piano, which the eminent Swiss-Romanian pianist and Vevey resident Clara Haskil would play when she called on Chaplin, still has pride of place.
Visitors to the museum will have access to the most intimate rooms occupied by the Chaplin family, including the first floor room where he died on Christmas Day 1977.
In the vast vaulted cellars the museum's designers plan to install a "Hollywood street" complete with street lamps to recreate the atmosphere of the 1920s.
Today the space is largely empty but for, high on a dusty shelf, a wooden box containing an angel costume which Chaplin designed for one of his daughters.
Until last year the house had still been lived in by Chaplin's descendants.
"I came here to live about 15 years ago after the death of my mother," recalled Michael, one of Chaplin's sons, who settled here with five of his seven children alongside his brother Eugene, himself a father of five. "Regularly people used to ring at the door to ask to visit. They came from China, Latin America, Africa. It was extraordinary to see how universally famous my father was.
"That is what gave us the idea of turning it into a museum, we felt we owed it to them."
Three of Chaplin's eight children jointly owned the house: Eugene, Victoria and Michael. But the upkeep was steep and it was tempting to sell to the highest bidder.
"Michael Jackson was very interested, he came several times," Meylan recalled.
In 2001, a foundation was finally set up with the aim of creating a museum, with the former mayor of Corseir-sur-Vevey, Michel Henry, one of its members. Local councils are offering their support in the form of loans.
Swiss cantonal authorities are expected to approve the sale to Luxemburgish investors early next year so the project can get under way for the museum to open its doors at the end of 2009.