What your insurance policy decides before you do
The European standard EN 1143-1 grades safes from class 0 to class VI according to their resistance to attack, measured in standardised destructive tests. A second standard, EN 1047, covers fire resistance and is judged separately: a burglary-resistant safe is not necessarily fireproof. For irreplaceable papers kept in a house above the bay of Villefranche, the two requirements have to be met together rather than one standing in for the other.
It is the insurance policy that sets the amount covered at home, and it frequently ties that cover to a minimum grade and to compliant anchoring. On a corniche second home left empty for months, the clauses are often stricter still. Read the policy before buying: it is the policy that determines the safe, not the other way round.
Anchoring does the rest. A fifty-kilo safe left unfixed is carried out by two people, and what could not be opened on the spot is opened later somewhere else, at leisure. In a corniche house opened a few weeks a year, that operation has all the time it needs and nobody about to witness it.
Anchoring into stone, and getting it up there
The walls of the old village are thick stone masonry: excellent for anchoring, but neither drilled nor plugged the way a concrete block is. You read the joints, adapt the drilling and use chemical anchors intended for an uneven substrate. A plasterboard partition put up during a recent refit, by contrast, will hold nothing at all.
A built-in safe needs sufficient wall thickness and a clean chase; its advantage is concealment, which remains a safe’s best asset. A free-standing model allows larger volumes but is visible, and is then fixed to both floor and wall. In either case the position is kept away from the rooms searched first: bedroom, dressing room, study. In an old-village home spread over several levels, that choice is made room by room.
Then there is the handling, as ever here. A heavy safe does not climb a stepped lane on its own, and the opening onto an old landing limits what will pass, so the route is measured before ordering. In the Vallon de la Roche and on the corniches access is easier, but damp on the valley floor rules the cellar out for documents.
How does this service work?
Techniques, typical situations, standards and things to watch out for: it is all on our safes page. This page focuses on what the service involves in Villefranche-sur-Mer.