History of Roquebrune and Cap-Martin

Roccabruna, but it was returned to Monaco in 1814. In 1804 Napoleon built a road along the coastline. This road connected the village to the rest of the Côte d'Azur, and eventually led to its merger with the smaller town of Cap-Martin.

In 1848, there was a revolution related to the Italian Risorgimento, with the result that Roccabruna and Menton became free cities under the protection of the Savoy Prince. They hoped to be part of the Kingdom of Sardinia, but this did not occur, and the towns after two years of independence were put under Savoyan administration (but nominally still under the Prince of Monaco). They remained in a state of political limbo from 1849 until they were finally ceded to France by a plebiscite in 1861.

Giuseppe Garibaldi, who promoted the union of the County of Nice to Italy, complained that the plebiscite was not done with "universal vote" and consequently Roccabruna was requested by Italian irredentists.

As a consequence of these irredentism ideals, during World War II all the coastal area between Italy and Monte Carlo was occupied and administered by the Kingdom of Italy until September 1943.

The area became fashionable in the 1920s and 1930s leading to the construction of several notable buildings including Coco Chanel's La Pausa on Cap Martin, and Eileen Gray and Jean Badovici's E-1027.

The Irish poet William Butler Yeats died in the neighboring town of Menton on January 28, 1939. Yeats's body was buried at a cemetery in Roquebrune until September 1948, when it was exhumed and reburied in Drumcliff, County Sligo, Ireland