Two-city Mafia and a Gatsby night at the villa - how it went

How it was conceived

The organisers put the idea into words back in the July teaser: “Two cities. One villa with a pool. Two nights. And a game where the winner isn’t the strongest but the craftiest.” By the end of summer it had become the biggest evening in the community’s history - that is what the organisers themselves called it afterwards.

The plan was simple. A team from Toulouse comes to Montpellier. Everyone gathers at a villa next to a vineyard, in the middle of a private 1.8-hectare park - pines, garrigue scrub, a huge garden, a pool, about twenty-five minutes from the sea. On Friday 28 August, a Gatsby-style evening. On Saturday the 29th, the big two-city game of Mafia. You could come for one evening, for both, or stay at the villa for the whole weekend, until Sunday.

The villa had only two guest rooms; bookings for them closed on 1 August. Places for the evenings were taken until 25 August, and the announcement with the full programme came out a week ahead, on the 21st.

Friday: the Gatsby night

According to the announcement the evening started at 19:00. The host opened the programme: toasts in the style of the twenties, an introductions round - guests from the two cities didn’t know each other yet - the Charleston and a best-outfit contest.

The music was live, and that point was made deliberately: “a live voice, not a playlist.” The singer opened the evening with “It Had to Be You” from 1924, followed by the golden classics - Sinatra, Elvis, The Platters. In the photos he stands on the terrace with a vintage microphone against a pink sunset sky over the pines. The organisers later wrote about it in the caption to the “unpolished” frames: “a live voice instead of a playlist, and that moment when everyone had already forgotten about their phones.”

The table was served in three waves. First, salads, bruschetta, canapés, cheese and charcuterie boards. Around 20:00, the hot course - duck leg confit. Then dessert: mini éclairs and macarons. Towards midnight, hot mini sandwiches and watermelon. Everyone brought their own drinks; there was a non-alcoholic punch.

On the table itself, in the organisers’ words: “A table that took three hours to lay so it could live for one evening. Pampas grass in gold, a black glitter runner, candles, caviar and cheese - before the guests sat down.” That is exactly what the first frames of the gallery show: empty chairs on the terrace, white and black pampas grass in glass vases, tartlets with red caviar, a cheese board with grapes - an hour before people filled it all.

A dress code that worked

The dress code was announced in earnest: the twenties, black and gold. And it worked - quoting the photo caption again: “The dress code was ‘Gatsby’ - and nobody came ‘just as they were’. Feathers, pearls, boas, braces, elbow-length gloves. Every outfit is a story of its own.” The pictures bear this out literally: silver fringed dresses, white boas, feathered headbands, braces over white shirts, long black gloves. For the community’s first-ever Gatsby night the guests prepared as if for a real ball - and that is probably the main reason the photographs turned out the way they did.

Saturday: the two-city Mafia

Saturday didn’t start at the table, it started at sea. After lunch part of the group left the marina at La Grande-Motte on a big sailing catamaran: sheets, winches, an anchor dropped in open water and a swim, and that day has a page of its own. By the evening everyone was back at the villa, and then the thing Toulouse had come for began.

The organisers described the game in a single caption, and we can’t put it better: “A closed Mafia night at a villa near Montpellier - how it went. Two teams, Montpellier and Toulouse. A 1920s dress code, wax-sealed invitations, a long table on the terrace and a game until deep into the night.”

Details that appear in the photos and captions: black envelopes with wax seals instead of the usual role cards, candles along the table, red pool lighting that makes the water below look like a film set. Guests sit at a long table on the villa’s round terrace, string lights glowing over the garden. The round went on late - “The town goes to sleep. At the villa near Montpellier, nobody does.”

The table was run by Katerina, the host from Toulouse - she has been running Mafia for years, from club evenings to tournaments, and she takes beginners at the table as readily as regulars. She went on to host the community’s next game, on 19 September at the bar La Chistera in Montpellier, so the villa night and the autumn one were the same series in the same hands; her club in Toulouse plays every weekend, and the community chat will tell you how to get to one of its games.

Who won - Montpellier or Toulouse - the organisers didn’t say in the captions, and we won’t make it up. The only result they recorded themselves: “a game where your best friend may turn out to be the Mafia. Confirmed: they may.”

What’s missing from the “pretty” album

The organisers devoted a separate carousel to the frames “that didn’t make it into the ‘pretty’ album”: balloons, a puppy, a live voice instead of a playlist, and the moment everyone forgot their phones. For the community that seems to matter more than the staged shots: an event that took a month and a half to prepare was remembered in the end not for the décor but for people from two cities in 1920s costume sitting at one table until night, talking. We don’t publish an exact head count - the sources don’t have one.

What it cost

• The all-inclusive Gatsby night - €40: programme, live vocals, the spread, the pool.
• Both evenings, Friday and Saturday - €70.
• The stay package - €370 for two: two nights from 28 to 30 August, breakfasts, both evenings. There were two such rooms.

The money was collected directly by the weekend’s organisers: the community doesn’t sell tickets or run a till - it brings people together. Every paid event works this way - the catamaran, the yacht, the big barbecue: you pay the cost of the rental and the food, not an “entry fee”.

What’s next

The villa weekend was the third event in the community’s Mafia series, which began with the first game and karaoke on 18 April 2026 at a bar in central Montpellier: a free table for eleven and spectators stepping in for tired players. The fourth was the evening of 19 September at the bar La Chistera in Montpellier - Mafia in the afternoon, karaoke in the evening, again with guests from Toulouse. The fifth game is on 1 November in Toulouse, as the finale of the Slavic Weekend.

If you’re new to the south: we have an insider’s guide to Montpellier and a page on Russian-speaking Toulouse - the city whose team came for this weekend. How the community works and who runs it is on the about Vibe page. The full chronicle is in the Events section, including the dance party in February, the closest in spirit to the Gatsby night.