The cylinder is enough more often than people think
The cylinder holds the key secret and comes out with a single screw on the edge of the leaf. That is what you replace once keys have gone round: a concierge who used to open a Cap-Martin villa, a cleaning handover between two lets in Carnolès, a keyring lost on the shoreline path. A new cylinder cancels every copy at once, without touching the rest of the door.
The whole lock is at fault when the mechanism itself fails: a bolt that no longer throws, bent linkage on a multipoint, a faceplate pulled loose. In the seafront blocks of Le Cabbé we mainly find cylinders clogged by salt air; in the village, old cases whose spare parts no longer exist anywhere. The diagnosis is made at the door, never from a photograph.
A tenant leaving a Saint-Roman studio, a sale completing, a caretaker changing: replacing the cylinder is the sensible move. Think about the secondary ways in as well, from the service door to the cellar, the bike store and the garden gate, whenever they hung on the same ring. A cellar key sometimes opens the bin store that gives straight onto the street.
What the door itself dictates, from keep to coast road
In the lanes below the castle, doors are narrow, low and sometimes arched, and the frame is bedded straight into stone. Nothing matches catalogue sizes here: we measure the backset, the thickness of the leaf and the existing faceplate before ordering a single part. A faceplate can be cut down and a keep re-bedded into stone; nothing is forced.
The 1960s and 1970s blocks of Le Cabbé and Saint-Roman pose the opposite problem: standard dimensions, but co-ownership rules that often govern how a landing door may look. Ask the managing agent before changing a lock that is visible from the shared landing. The rule is usually about appearance rather than about the mechanism behind it.
By the sea, the metal matters too. A cylinder facing the open wind on a Carnolès door that gives straight outside clogs far faster than one sheltered at the bottom of a stairwell. That weighs on the choice, and a dry lubricant replaces any greasy penetrating spray. Sheltered landing doors, by contrast, age far better.
How does this service work?
Techniques, typical situations, standards and things to watch out for: it is all on our lock and cylinder replacement page. This page focuses on what the service involves in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin.