The Château de Monte-Cristo is a writer's house museum located in the country home of the writer Alexandre Dumas, père.
History
The château was built in 1846 by the architect Hippolyte Durand in Port-Marly, Yvelines, France. Dumas named it after one of his most successful novels: The Count of Monte Cristo (Le Comte de Monte-Cristo, 1845–1846). Durand also built a writing studio on the grounds, which Dumas named the Château d'If after another setting from the same novel. In 1848, short of money, Dumas had to sell the property.
The château fell into disrepair by the 1960s, it was restored with the patronage of King Hassan II of Morocco, who financed the restoration of its Moorish room. Since 1994, the two châteaux and gardens have been restored. The entire property is operated as a public historic museum memorializing Dumas, père.

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The Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye is a royal palace in the commune of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, in the département of Yvelines, about 19 km west of Paris, France. Today, it houses the musée d'Archéologie nationale (National Museum of Archaeology).
History
12th–13th centuries
The first castle, named the Grand Châtelet, was built on the site by Louis VI in around 1122. The castle was expanded by Louis IX in the 1230s.
Louis IX's chapelle Saint Louis at the castle belongs to the Rayonnant phase of French Gothic architecture. A 1238 charter of Louis IX instituting a regular religious service at the chapel is the first mention of a chapel having been built at the royal castle. This was a Sainte Chapelle, to house a relic of the Crown of Thorns or the True Cross. Its plan and architecture prefigure the major Sainte-Chapelle which Saint Louis built within the Palais de la Cité at Paris between 1240 and 1248. Both buildings were built by Louis's favourite architect Pierre de Montreuil, who adapted the architectural formulae invented at Saint Germain for use in Paris. A single nave ends in a chevet, with almost all the wall areas filled by tall thin glass windows, between which are large exterior buttresses. The ogives of the vault rest on columns between the bays and the column bases are placed behind a low isolated arcade. The building can thus be open and empty of all internal supports. This large number of windows is also enabled by the pierre armée technique, with metal elements built into the structure of the walls to ensure the stones' stability. The west wall is adorned by a large Gothic rose window in the "rayonnant" Gothic style. It was in this chapel in 1238 that Baldwin II of Constantinople presented Louis with the relic of the crown of thorns and, though they were intended for the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, they were housed here until the Paris chapel was consecrated in April 1248.
The castle was burned by the Black Prince in 1346; of it, only the Gothic chapel remains from the site's medieval phase. This Château Vieux was rebuilt by Charles V in the 1360s on the old foundations.
16th–18th centuries
The oldest parts of the current château were reconstructed by Francis I in 1539, and have subsequently been expanded several times. On 10 July 1547 a political rivalry came to a head in a bloody game here. Against the odds, Guy Chabot, 7th baron de Jarnac triumphed over François de Vivonne, seigneur de la Chasteigneraie, giving rise to the coup de Jarnac.
Henry II built a separate new château (le Château Neuf) nearby, to designs by Philibert de l'Orme. It stood at the crest of a slope, which was shaped, under the direction of Étienne du Pérac into three massive descending terraces and narrower subsidiary mediating terraces, which were linked by divided symmetrical stairs and ramps and extended a single axis that finished at the edge of the Seine; the design took many cues from the Villa Lante at Bagnaia. "Étienne du Pérac had spent a long time in Italy, and one manifestation of his interest in gardens of this type is his well-known view of the Villa d'Este, engraved in 1573."
The gardens laid out at Saint-Germain-en-Laye were among a half-dozen gardens introducing the Italian garden style to France that laid the groundwork for the French formal garden. Unlike the parterres that were laid out in casual relation to existing châteaux, often on difficult sites originally selected for defensive reasons, these new gardens extended the central axis of a symmetrical building façade in rigorously symmetrical axial designs of patterned parterres, gravel walks, fountains and basins, and formally planted bosquets; they began the tradition that reached its apex after 1650 in the gardens of André Le Nôtre. According to Claude Mollet's Théâtre des plans et jardinage the parterres were laid out in 1595 for Henry IV by Mollet, trained at Anet and the progenitor of a dynasty of royal gardeners. One of the parterre designs by Mollet at Saint-Germain-en-Laye was illustrated in Olivier de Serres' Le théâtre d'agriculture et mesnage des champs (1600), but the Château Neuf and the whole of its spectacular series of terraces can be fully seen in an engraving after Alexandre Francini, 1614.
Louis XIV was born at Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1638. One of du Pérac's retaining walls collapsed in 1660, and Louis undertook a renovation of the gardens in 1662. At his majority he established his court here in 1666, but he preferred the Château Vieux: the Château Neuf was abandoned in the 1660s and demolished. From 1663 until 1682, when the king removed definitively to Versailles, the team that he inherited from the unfortunate Fouquet — Louis Le Vau, Jules Hardouin-Mansart and André Le Nôtre laboured to give the ancient pile a more suitable aspect.
The gardens were remade by André Le Nôtre from 1669 to 1673, and include a 2.4 kilometre long stone terrace which provides a view over the valley of the Seine and, in the distance, Paris.
Louis XIV turned the château over to King James II of England after his exile from Britain in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. King James lived in the château for thirteen years, and his daughter Louise-Marie Stuart was born in exile here in 1692. King James lies buried in the nearby Church of Saint-Germain; his wife Mary Beatrice remained at the château until her death in 1718. Their son James left the château in 1716, ultimately settling in Rome. Many Jacobites - supporters of the exiled Stuarts - remained at the château until the French Revolution, leaving in 1793. The Jacobites often consisted of former members of the Jacobite court, and the apartments left empty in the chateau by the Jacobite court pensioners upon their death, were often passed down to their widows and children by the caretaker of the chateau, Adrien Maurice, the Duke de Noailles. The Jacobite colony at Saint-Germain was still dominant in the 1750s, when they were however treated with increasing hostility. After the death of the Duke de Noailles in 1766, who had been responsible for the continuing Jacobite dominance because of his preference to give rooms to Jacobites, the British dominance quickly decreased and more French inhabitants were given lodgings in the chateau: the last member of the Stuart court was Theresa O'Connel, who died in 1778. The last descendants of the British Jacobites, by then mostly bearing French names, were evicted when the building was confiscated by the government during the French revolution in 1793.
19th–21st centuries
In the 19th century, Napoleon I established his cavalry officers' training school here. Napoleon III initiated restoration of the castle by Eugène Millet, starting in 1862. It became the Musée des Antiquités Nationales (National Museum of Antiquities) in 1867, displaying the archeological objects of France.[citation needed] Auguste Lafollye took over responsibility for the restoration on Millet's death in 1879, continuing until 1889. His goal, and that of his successor Honoré Daumet, was to restore the French Renaissance style of Francis I.
On September 10, 1919 the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, ending hostilities between the Allies of World War I and Austria, was signed at the château.
During the German occupation (1940–44), the château served as the headquarters of the German Army in France.
The museum was renamed the Musée d'Archéologie Nationale in 2005. Its collections include finds from Paleolithic to Merovingian times.

Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye

The Château Louis XIV is a château constructed between 2008 and 2011 in the commune of Louveciennes in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France region.
The chateau was built by the property developer Emad Khashoggi's property development company COGEMAD using traditional craftsmanship techniques and materials. Located between Versailles and Marly-le-Roi on a 23-hectare (57-acre) walled site, the property is surrounded by moats and has a constructed surface area of 7,000 m2 (75,350 ft2), 5,000 m2 (53,800 ft2) of which are living space. The property pays various tributes to Louis XIV of France, France's Sun King and stands on a land which once formed part of the Versailles estate.
Khashoggi had previously restored the Palais Rose in Le Vésinet and the Château du Verduron in Marly-le-Roi. The Chateau Louis XIV was built on the site of the former Chateau du Camp in Louveciennes, with the aim of building a modern house, with hi-tech controls incorporated within a 17th-century aspect, layout, and materials.
In 2015, the chateau was sold to a Middle Eastern buyer, identified by The New York Times as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. The price of USD 301,000,000 was a world record for a residential property.
History
In the late 17th century, the property where the current Château Louis XIV was built consisted of several plots of land, chestnut groves and woodland. In the early 18th century, the royal regiment was in charge of participating in a major excavation project in Marly-le-Roi. They thus decided to set up camp in an existing clearing on these very plots of land.
During this period, Louis XIV decided to build a palace in Marly-le-Roi nestled in a lush green setting; a place where he would regularly go to find the peace and quiet that he lacked in Versailles.
Later, the Swiss Guards, assigned to ensure the security of the Château de Marly, set up their camp on the property. Also known as the “Royal Regiment Camp” or the “Marly Camp,” the camp disappeared in the mid 18th century, and the Château de Marly suffered in the French Revolution.
In 1797, during a settlement, the camp and land that were part of the property were sold to Françoise-Suzanne Guyhon Monthaut who, in turn, sold them to the Vicomte Charles-Gilbert Morel de Vindé (fr) and his wife in 1805. The Vicomte Charles-Louis Terray de Morel-Vindé, counselor at the royal court in Paris, inherited the property following the death of his grandfather in 1842, and sold it in 1848 to Jean-Pierre Blondi and Adélaïde Halguin, who had the first house and outbuildings built on the property.
The camp property became a large farm. Here, a cavalry regiment and several military companies would sometimes set up camp in what was then called “The camp farm” until 1863, when Dr Duborgia, mayor of Bougival, purchased and expanded the property.
In 1888, Charles-Emile Clerc, the new owner following the death of Duborgia, undertook the demolition of the initial buildings which, over the years, had only undergone a few scarcely noticeable changes. Having acquired several plots of land, Charles-Emile Clerc was able to expand the property, which he transformed into a residential domain with a large house surrounded by extensive wooded grounds.
The property remained in the family for over a century. During this time, it underwent a few modifications such as the addition of a stable, a caretaker’s house and a number of paths, before eventually being sold to a French couple in 1991. This would then give way to a succession of owners, until the site's purchase and rebuilding by Khashoggi.
COGEMAD
The Saudi-born French property developer Emad Khashoggi demolished the building and constructed a new house, built with respect to 17th-century craft traditions. Khashoggi employed craftsmen with traditional skills. He explained that he wanted to "give rise to a 'new structure,' for which one is able to create sustainable projects that will make their mark in the future as well as in the heritage of a region, a country." For the construction of the Château Louis XIV his company, Cogemad, employed an average of 120 workers every day, and included artisans such as: sculptors, mosaic artisans, painters, gilders, iron craftsmen, cabinetmakers, marble masons, landscapers, fibrous plasterers, clockmakers, bronze casting artisans, roofers, carpenters and coppersmiths. The property includes an underwater room built into the moats – the only one of its kind in Europe. The ceiling of the drawing room has a trompe-l'œil painting inspired by a fresco created by Charles Le Brun for the Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte, which took master painters several months to create. This, in addition to the fountain in the gardens, is one of the centerpieces of the château.
The trades and the artisans
Numerous companies certified as Living Heritage Artisans and Companies took part in this project, which enabled them to train new craftsmen. The construction project brought together several age-old trades, which produced the following key works:
Stonemasonry
860 m3 (30,370 ft3) of massive natural stone divided as follows:
80 m3 (2,800 ft3) of Lanvignes limestone
175 m3 (6,000 ft3) of fine Saint-Maximin limestone
605 m3 (21,300 ft3) of fine Saint-Maximin limestone
They were used to make balusters, sculpted tables, fire pots and capitals for sculpted pilasters.
On display in the château’s Garden à la française is a stone-sculpted reproduction of the Chariot of Apollo from the fountain in Versailles. The smaller-scale copy of this sculpted group, designed for the king’s gardens by the artist Jean-Baptiste Tuby, retained the proportions and details of the original. It was then gilded in gold-leaf.
Marble
The marble was crafted in various styles: delicate marquetry for the floors, mosaics for the garden level, book matched in the bathrooms, sculpted for the monumental statue of Louis XIV and molded for the Grand Siècle-style fireplaces.
List of marbles used and their place of origin:
Black Saint-Laurent: Hérault - France
Yellow Sienna: Tuscany - Italy
Antique Green: Aosta Valley - Italy
Cherry Red: Belgium
Collemandina Marble: Tuscany - Italy
Salome Marble: Turkey
Red Levante Marble: Liguria - Italy
Macauba Quarzite: Brazil
Pink Alpinina : Portugal
Moonstone: Brazil
Pink onyx: Iran
Rouge de France: Hérault - France
Calacatta Topazio : Tuscany - Italy
Bamboo Green: Brazil
Cabinetmaking and joinery
Many 17th-century decorations sculpted in wood embellish the interior. One of the centerpieces is found on the monumental entrance door sculpted entirely by hand in oak in high relief, and projects out by 17 cm (6.6 in). It depicts the Sun God on horse-back as a Roman Emperor crowned by Victory. This work was inspired by a model from the War Room at the Château de Versailles.
Clock-making
For the façade of the château, Emad Khashoggi commissioned clock-makers to create a genuine monumental bronze and enamel clock identical to the one on the façade of the Château de Versailles.
Painting and decor
Several of the ceilings in the reception halls and master suites depict themes that were dear to Louis XIV, and which are also often seen in Versailles. For instance, the imposing painted ceiling of the cupola in the main drawing room was influenced by an Allégoire de l’Aurore project that was conceived by Charles Le Brun for the Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte, but which never came to fruition.
Bronze casting
Works include the creation of 17th-century lamps and decorative hardware inspired by numerous archives from the History of France, notably from the 17th century under the reign of Louis XIV.
Iron-working
Works include numerous handmade curved banisters and balustrades reproduced from17th-century spirals and motifs. These assemblages are always created using tenons, mortises or pegs, without the slightest trace of welding, according to the finest French tradition.
Framework
A traditional frame was constructed for the dome, which was assembled the old-fashioned way using a system of tenons and mortises.
Roofing
In keeping with age-old techniques, the roofers hand-crafted the slate roof from Angers. The roof also boasts fire pots sculpted in stone and gilded metal spikes on the roof’s ridge beam.
Gardens
The Château Louis XIV, nestled in an authentic lush green setting, is consistent with the standards of the 17th century, and its parks and gardens are no exception. In line with André Le Nôtre’s theories for the Château de Versailles and the Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte, the grounds pay tribute to the French-style gardens. It boasts flower beds and embroidered box hedges, plays on perspective, topiary yew trees clipped into small pyramids, a tree-lined labyrinth, a small farmhouse with goats, a vegetable garden, stables and even an English-style garden on the lower level, all in keeping with the natural outlines of the property where the château is located.

Château Louis XIV

Château de Malmaison is a French château near the western bank of the Seine about 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) west of the centre of Paris in Rueil-Malmaison.
Formerly the residence of Empress Joséphine de Beauharnais, along with the Tuileries it was the headquarters of the French government from 1800 to 1802, and Napoleon's last residence in France at the end of the Hundred Days in 1815. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the estate became a summer residence of Edward Tuck, the Vice Consul of the American Legation in Paris.
History
Joséphine de Beauharnais bought the manor house in April 1799 for herself and her husband, General Napoléon Bonaparte, the future Napoléon I of France, at that time away fighting the Egyptian Campaign. Malmaison was a run-down estate, seven miles (12 km) west of central Paris that encompassed nearly 150 acres (0.61 km2) of woods and meadows.
Upon his return, Bonaparte expressed fury at Joséphine for purchasing such an expensive house with the money she had expected him to bring back from the Egyptian campaign. The house, for which she had paid well over 300,000 francs, needed extensive renovations, and she spent a fortune doing so. Malmaison would bring great happiness to the Bonapartes. Joséphine's daughter, Hortense would call it "a delicious spot".
Joséphine endeavored to transform the large estate into "the most beautiful and curious garden in Europe, a model of good cultivation". She located rare and exotic plants and animals to enhance the gardens. Joséphine wrote: "I wish that Malmaison may soon become the source of riches for all [of France]"...
In 1800, Joséphine built a heated orangery large enough for 300 pineapple plants. Five years later, she ordered the building of a greenhouse, heated by a dozen coal-burning stoves. From 1803 until her death in 1814, Josephine cultivated nearly 200 new plants in France for the first time.
The property achieved enduring fame for its rose garden. Empress Joséphine had the Belgian artist Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1759–1840) record her roses (and lilies), and prints of these works sell quite well, even today. She created an extensive collection of roses, gathering plants from her native Martinique and from other places around the world. She grew some 250 varieties of roses. From the foreword to Jardin de la Malmaison (1803):
You have gathered around you the rarest plants growing on French soil...as we inspect them in the beautiful gardens of Malmaison, an impressive reminder of the conquests of your illustrious husband...
Birds and animals of all sorts began to enrich her garden, where they were allowed to roam free among the grounds. At the height of her days at Malmaison, Joséphine had the company of kangaroos, emus, black swans, zebras, sheep, gazelles, ostriches, chamois, a seal, antelopes and llamas to name a few. Some were from the Baudin expedition.
After her divorce from Napoléon, Joséphine received Malmaison in her own right, along with a pension of 5 million francs a year, and remained there until her death in 1814. Napoléon returned and took residence in the house after his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo (1815), before his exile to the island of Saint Helena.
In 1842 Malmaison was purchased by Maria Christina, widow of King Ferdinand VII of Spain; she lived there with her second husband Agustín Fernando Muñoz, 1st Duke of Riánsares. In 1861 Maria Christina sold the property to Napoleon III.
Malmaison was fully restored by the famous French architect Pierre Humbert in the early 20th century. It is now considered an important historical monument.
Present times
The public can visit the manor house as a Napoleonic musée national. The museum lies on RN 13 (route nationale 13) from Paris and bus 258 from RER A "Grande Arche" station.

Château de Malmaison

The Petit Trianon, built between 1762 and 1768 during the reign of Louis XV of France, is a small château located on the grounds of the Palace of Versailles in Versailles, France. The park of the Grand Trianon includes the Petit Trianon.
Design and construction
The Petit Trianon was built on the site of a botanical garden developed about a decade earlier by Louis XV, within the grounds of the Grand Trianon, Louis XIV's retreat from the Palace of Versailles to the southeast. It was designed by Ange-Jacques Gabriel by the order of Louis XV for his long-term mistress, Madame de Pompadour, and was constructed between 1762 and 1768. Madame de Pompadour died four years before its completion, and the Petit Trianon was subsequently occupied by her successor, Madame du Barry. Upon his accession to the throne in 1774, the 20-year-old Louis XVI gave the château and its surrounding park to his 19-year-old Queen Marie Antoinette for her exclusive use and enjoyment.
The château of the Petit Trianon is a celebrated example of the transition from the Rococo style of the earlier part of the 18th century, to the more sober and refined, Neoclassical style of the 1760s and onward. Essentially an exercise on a cube, the Petit Trianon attracts interest by virtue of its four facades, each thoughtfully designed according to that part of the estate it would face. The Corinthian order predominates, with two detached and two semi-detached pillars on the side of the formal French garden, and pilasters facing both the courtyard and the area once occupied by Louis XV's greenhouses. Overlooking the former botanical garden of the king, the remaining facade was left bare. The subtle use of steps compensates for the differences in level of the château's inclined location.
Marie Antoinette would come to the Petit Trianon not only to escape the formality of court life, but also to shake off the burden of her royal responsibilities. At Versailles, she was under considerable pressure and judgement from both her family and the court, and the Petit Trianon was her place of ease and leisure where she could rest from those trials. Since all was "de par la Reine" (by order of the Queen), none were permitted to enter the property without the Queen's express permission (not even, it was said, Louis XVI). Such exclusivity alienated the court nobility, which she did very willingly, since only the queen's "inner circle" (including the Princess de Lamballe, and Gabrielle de Polastron, duchesse de Polignac) were invited.
A house of intimacy and of pleasure, the building was designed to require as little interaction between guests and servants as possible. To that end, the table in the salles à manger was conceived to be mobile, mechanically lowered and raised through the floorboards so that the servants below could set places sight unseen. The tables were never built, but the delineation for the mechanical apparatus can still be seen from the foundation.
Within the queen's apartment, Marie Antoinette's need for privacy is apparent: the decor of her boudoir displays an inventiveness unique to the age, featuring mirrored panels that, by the simple turning of a crank, can be raised or lowered to obscure the windows and reflect the candlelight. Her bedroom, although simple, is also elegant in accord with her general style, provided with furniture from Georges Jacob and Jean Henri Riesener. The wallpaper was painted by Jean-Baptiste Pillement.
History after French Revolution
On 5 October 1789, Marie Antoinette was in the gardens of the Petit Trianon when a page brought news of the imminent arrival of an armed crowd from Paris. With the enforced departure of the royal family the next day the Petit Trianon was almost abandoned except for the gardeners and other staff who continued to live there. Renovations that had been underway were interrupted, leaving large sums owed to builders. The former Queen's gardener Antoine Richard was appointed as curator of the gardens and plant nursery in 1792 by the Minister of the Interior. After the final overthrow of the monarchy in July 1792, all of the furniture, art works and other valuables of the Petit Trianon were given to auction, under a decree of the Convention dated 10 June 1793. The auction began on Sunday, August 25, 1793 and continued until 11 August 1794. The properties sold were widely scattered. Silverware, lead and brass fixtures were requisitioned for use in the arsenals. The sculptor Amable Boichard was appointed in April 1794 to remove "emblems of royalty and feudalism" from the property.
Under the new Republic, the Petit Trianon underwent a number of changes. Declared national property, the land was divided into ten lots. The City of Versailles proposed that a botanical garden be established, but this plan was not adopted. In 1796, the land was leased to a tavern. By 1801, the use of the grounds for dances and festivals had led to neglect and vandalism. The buildings of the hamlet were reported to be dilapidated. Some improvements in the layout of the gardens were subsequently made and a school located in part of the complex.

Petit Trianon

The Château de Maisons (now Château de Maisons-Laffitte), designed by François Mansart from 1630 to 1651, is a prime example of French baroque architecture and a reference point in the history of French architecture. The château is located in Maisons-Laffitte, a northwestern suburb of Paris, in the department of Yvelines, Île-de-France.
History
The family of Longueil, long associated with the Parlement de Paris, had been in possession of part of the seigneurie of Maisons since 1460, and a full share since 1602. Beginning in 1630, and for the next decades, René de Longueil, first president of the Cour des aides and then président à mortier to the Parlement de Paris, devoted the fortune inherited by his wife, Madeleine Boulenc de Crévecœur (who died in 1636), to the construction of a magnificent château. By 1649 he was able to spend the summer months in his new house, but works on the outbuildings continued after that date. Louis XIV visited Maisons in April 1651.
The attribution to François Mansart was common knowledge among contemporaries. Charles Perrault reported its reputation: "The château of Maisons, of which he [Mansart] had made all the buildings and all the gardens, is of such a singular beauty that there is not a curious foreigner who does not go there to see it, as one of the finest things that we have in France." Nevertheless, the sole surviving document mentioning Mansart's name is a payment of 20,000 livres from Longueil in 1657, apparently occasioned by the final completion of the château. A pamphlet with the title La Mansarade accuses the architect of having realised, after completing the construction of the first floor, that he had committed an error in the plans and razed everything built so far in order to commence anew.
Perrault emphasizes that the architect had the habit of remodeling certain parts of his buildings more than once, in a search for perfection. This length of time the construction required.
At the death of René de Longueil, in 1677, the château passed to his heirs until 1732, and then in succession to the marquise de Belleforière, then to the marquis de Soyécourt. In 1777 it became the property of Louis XVI's brother the comte d'Artois, who carried out important interior transformations under the direction of his house architect François-Joseph Bélanger. These works were interrupted in 1782 for lack of funds. Maisons ceased to be kept up.
Confiscated during the Revolution as "national goods", the château was sold in 1798 to an army provisioner, M. Lauchère, again in 1804 to maréchal Jean Lannes, and finally in 1818, to the Parisian banker Jacques Lafitte. Starting in 1834, Lafitte proceeded to develop the surrounding park as building lots; he tore down the fine stables to furnish construction materials for the purchasers. After his daughter the princesse de la Moskowa sold the château in 1850, it passed to M. Thomas de Colmar, and to the painter William Tilman Grommé (ru), who farmed out the small park and demolished the entrance gateway to the forecourt, enclosing the severely reduced space with a wrought iron grille brought from the Château de Mailly in Picardy. Grommé died in 1900. In his last will, he ordered his whole property to the city of Vyborg, which decided to keep his art collection but sell the château.
In 1905, the State purchased the château to save it from demolition. It was classed a monument historique in 1914.
Architecture
The Château de Maisons was built between the Seine and the forest of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, with its garden front oriented to the southeast. Originally it comprised the garden, a small park of 33 hectares and a large outer park of 300 hectares. The visitor arrived by one of two avenues that crossed in a T intersection before the gate to the cour d'honneur. The principal central axis led to the forest, the cross axis through the village to the southwest and to the river, thence on to Paris. Three gateways stood at the far ends of the avenues.
On one side and the other of the avant-cour, Mansart constructed the stables, masterworks of architecture whose monumental character gave a preview of those that would be built at Versailles and Chantilly. Of these works there exists only a grotto, that served also to water the horses.
The château stood on a rectangular platform outlined in the French manner with a dry moat. The cour d'honneur was defined by terraces. The central block extends symmetrically into short wings, composed of several sections, each with its own roofline, with raked roofs and tall chimney stacks, in several ranges, with a broken façade reminiscent of the planning in work of Pierre Lescot and Philibert Delorme in the preceding century. The single pile construction typical of its epoch carries three storeys, a basement supporting a ground floor and piano nobile with three attic floors above.
Interiors
The grand central entrance vestibule of stone was originally enclosed by exceptionally fine wrought iron grilles, which are today at the Louvre. Large bas-reliefs of The Seasons were executed by Gilles Guérin after drawings provided by Jacques Sarazin, who oversaw all the sculpture provided for Maisons. There are lunettes representing The Elements, for which Sarazin's drawings also survive. This vestibule gives onto two state apartments. The apartment on the left, called the Appartement des Captifs was that of René de Longueuil; it has retained its original decor. The chimneypiece of the corner room, the chambre de parade represents a bas-relief medallion of Louis XIII supported by captives and a frieze of the triumph of Louis XIII, works of Gilles Guérin that have given a name to the suite of rooms.
The apartment on the right, called the Appartement de la Renommée was entirely redecorated by Bélanger for the comte d'Artois in a discreet neoclassical style quite in keeping with the general classic style of the château.
The staircase was of a type that Mansart originated at Balleroy, in which the central space is left open, so that the flights climb the four walls.
On the parade floor, the apartment to the right, called the Appartement des Aigles for the Empire style decoration effected by maréchal Lannes in expectation of the visit of Napoleon, is undistinguished. That on the left, on the other hand, the Appartement du Roi is also called à l'italienne in that it is covered in false vaulting. The apartment consists of a vast Salle des Fêtes employed also in the character of a guardroom, with a tribune for musicians. It opens into the Salon d'Hercule from the painting of Hercules defeating the Hydra that used to be featured on the chimneybreast, with sculptures by Guérin. In the end pavilion is a domed room articulated by therm figures, a precursor to the grand salon of Vaux-le-Vicomte. A small oval cabinet, or private withdrawing room, the Cabinet des Miroirs bears a refined decor, and a parquet floor inlaid with pewter and bone.
Influence on architecture
The Château de Franconville at Saint-Martin-du-Tertre (Val-d'Oise), built by Gabriel-Hippolyte Destailleur for the duc de Massa in 1876 takes Maisons for its model.
In the suburbs of Beijing, the Chinese multi-millionaire real-estate developer Zhang Yuchen built a copy of the Château, enhancing it by adding two wings from the Palace of Fontainebleau. The building cost $50 million, contains a hotel and seminar center and opened in 2004. It is called Zhang-Laffitte. (40°7′49″N 116°26′32″E)
The Plaza Constitución terminal train station (Buenos Aires, Argentina) opened on January 1. 1887 and rebuilt in 1900, is also an example of the influence of Maisons.

Château de Maisons-Laffitte

The Palace of Versailles was the principal royal residence of France from 1682 under Louis XIV until the start of the French Revolution in 1789 under Louis XVI. It is located in the department of Yvelines, in the region of Île-de-France, about 20 kilometres (12 miles) southwest of the centre of Paris.
The palace is now a Monument historique and UNESCO World Heritage site, notable especially for the ceremonial Hall of Mirrors, the jewel-like Royal Opera, and the royal apartments; for the more intimate royal residences, the Grand Trianon and Petit Trianon located within the park; the small rustic Hameau (Hamlet) created for Marie Antoinette; and the vast Gardens of Versailles with fountains, canals, and geometric flower beds and groves, laid out by André le Nôtre. The Palace was stripped of all its furnishings after the French Revolution, but many pieces have been returned and many of the palace rooms have been restored.
In 2017 the Palace of Versailles received 7,700,000 visitors, making it the second-most visited monument in the Île-de-France region, just behind the Louvre and ahead of the Eiffel Tower.

Château de Versailles

The Château de Bagatelle is a small neoclassical château with several small formal French gardens, a rose garden, and an orangerie. It is set on 59 acres of gardens in French landscape style in the Bois de Boulogne, which is located in the 16th arrondissement of Paris.
There is also a Château de Bagatelle located near Abbeville in northern France.
Origins
The château is a glorified playground, actually a maison de plaisance intended for brief stays while hunting in the Bois de Boulogne in a party atmosphere. The French word bagatelle, from the Italian word bagattella, means a trifle or little decorative nothing. Initially, a small hunting lodge was built on the site for the Maréchal d'Estrées in 1720.
In 1775, the Comte d'Artois, Louis XVI's brother, purchased the property from the Prince de Chimay. The Comte soon had the existing house torn down, with plans to rebuild. Famously, Marie-Antoinette wagered against the Comte, her brother-in-law, that the new château could not be completed within three months. The Comte engaged the neoclassical architect François-Joseph Bélanger to design the building that remains in the park today.
The Comte won his bet, completing the house, the only residence ever designed and built expressly for him, in sixty-three days, from September 1777. It is estimated that the project, which came to include manicured gardens, employed eight hundred workers and cost over three million livres. Bélanger's brother-in-law, Jean-Démosthène Dugourc, provided much of the decorative detail.
The central domed feature was a music-room. The master bedroom was fitted up in the manner of a military tent, and Hubert Robert executed a set of six Italianate landscapes for the bathroom. Most of the furnishings were provided by numerous Parisian marchand-merciers, notably Dominique Daguerre, and a decorative painter was A.-L. Delabrière.
History
In 1777, a party was thrown in the recently completed house in honour of Louis XVI and the Queen. The party featured a new table game featuring a small billiard-like table with raised edges and cue sticks, which players used to shoot ivory balls up an inclined playfield with fixed pins. The table game was dubbed "bagatelle" by the Count and shortly after swept through France, evolving into various forms which eventually culminated in the modern pinball machine.
The formal garden spaces surrounding the château, which was linked to its dependencies by underground tunnels, was expanded with a surrounding park in the naturalistic English landscape style by the Scottish garden-designer Thomas Blaikie, and dotted with sham ruins, an obelisk, a pagoda, primitive hermits' huts and grottoes.
A fête given on 20 May 1780, described in Blaikie's diary, gives a sense of the extravagant atmosphere. An additional part of the Bois de Boulogne had recently been taken into the prince's grounds, but the wall remained:
Mr Belanger had an invention which made a Singulare effect by undermining the wall on the outside and placing people with ropes to pull the wall down at a word.... there was an actor who acted the part of a Magician who asked their Majesties how they liked the Gardens and what a beautiful view there was towards the plain if that wall did not obstruct it but that their Majesties need only give the word that he with his enchanted wand would make that wall disappear; the Queen not knowing told him with a laugh 'Very well I should wish to see it disappear' and in the instant the signal was given and above 200 yards opposite where the company stood fell flat to the ground which surprised them all"
Following the Revolution, Napoleon I installed his son the Roi de Rome there, before the château was restored to the Bourbons. In 1835, it was sold by Henry, Count of Chambord to Francis Seymour-Conway, 3rd Marquess of Hertford and was inherited on his death seven years later by his son, the 4th Marquess, who already lived in Paris for most of the year. It contained the largest part of his extensive collection of French paintings, sculptures, furniture and works of decorative art, most of which went to form the Wallace Collection in London. Bagatelle underwent five years of redecorating and extensions, and then Lord Hertford did not reside in it until 1848.
Like most of his unentailed property, Bagatelle was left to his illegitimate son Sir Richard Wallace on Lord Hertford's death in 1870, as his entailed property and his title passed to a distant cousin. Bagatelle was acquired from his heir, Sir John Murray-Scott, by the City of Paris in 1905.
The Bagatelle gardens, created by Jean-Claude Nicolas Forestier, the Commissioner of Gardens for the city of Paris, are the site of the annual Concours international de roses nouvelles de Bagatelle, an international competition for new roses run by the City of Paris in June of each year.
Though the Revolutionary sales emptied the house, at Bagatelle in Sir John Murray-Scott's time were replicas of the bronze vases at Versailles. Upon the sale of the house by Sir John Murray-Scott, the vases were sent to his brother's house, Nether Swell Manor in Gloucestershire.
In 1892, the Bagatelle grounds hosted the first French championship match in rugby union, in which local side Racing Club de France, predecessor of today's Racing 92, defeated fellow Parisians Stade Français 4–3. The Bagatelle also played host to some of the polo events for the 1924 Summer Olympics in neighbouring Paris.
A number of the aviation experiments conducted by pioneer aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont used the grounds of Bagatelle (48°52′5″N 2°14′24″E), next to the château, as a flying field, most notably the initial flights of his 1906-era Santos-Dumont 14-bis canard biplane.

Château de Bagatelle

The Château de la Muette is a château located on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, France, near the Porte de la Muette.
Three châteaux have been located on the site since a hunting lodge was transformed into the first château for Princess Marguerite de Valois, favorite daughter of King Henry II, sister of Kings Francis II, Charles IX and Henry III and the first wife of King Henry IV, in the 16th century. The first château was extended and substantially reconstructed by Louis XV. Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette lived at this second château, and the first manned flight, in a hot air balloon, set off from the château in 1783.
The old château was demolished in the 1920s to make room for substantial houses, including a new château built by Henri James de Rothschild, which is now part of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's headquarters.
Name
The meaning of muette is not certain. In modern French, it denotes a mute woman. However, the name of the château may be derived from several words in the French language:
muete, a spelling which appears frequently up to the end of the 18th century and signifies a pack of deerhounds;
mues, the antler shed by stags in the autumn; or
mue, the moulting-period of hunting hawks.
It is clear that the name was connected with the hunting-lodge in the Bois de Boulogne, which mediaeval French kings used when they hunted deer in the forest.
History
First château
At the end of the 16th century, Charles IX had a royal hunting lodge on the site transformed into a small château for Marguerite de Valois (popularly known as Reine Margot), the first wife of Henry IV. Although their marriage was always rocky and eventually annulled, they became friends late in life and she was able to return to Paris and set up house in the château. Marguerite bequeathed her château to the little Dauphin, later Louis XIII, in 1606.
From 1606 to 1792, the property remained part of the royal estates. In 1716, the château became the home of the Duchesse de Berry, Marie Louise Elisabeth d'Orléans, daughter of the Duc d'Orléans, Regent of France. Antoine Watteau decorated the rooms with chinoiserie. Tsar Peter the Great of Russia visited her here.
Second château
On the Duchesse de Berry's death in 1719, the château passed to the nine-year-old king, Louis XV. Later, however, Louis XV used the château to entertain his mistresses, including the three de Nesle sisters, Madame de Pompadour and Madame du Barry.
Louis XV had the château entirely rebuilt by the architects Jacques V Gabriel and Ange-Jacques Gabriel between 1741 and 1745. The new, much larger, building was flanked by two large wings with many smaller outlying buildings. The Dauphin, later King Louis XVI, took possession of La Muette in 1764, and his future wife, Marie-Antoinette, lodged there on her arrival in France.
Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette
Louis XVI is said to have spent the happiest days of his life at the château with his young bride, although they had no knowledge of sexual matters and thus did not have children for seven years. During this period Louis abolished certain royal taxes, and he opened the gates of the Bois de Boulogne to the populace. The Emperor Joseph II, Marie-Antoinette's brother (travelling incognito under the name of "Count Falkenstein") visited the couple here in April 1777.
Louis granted a small area of sandy ground of the château's estate at les Sablons (near les Sablons metro station) to Antoine-Augustin Parmentier (1737–1813) to demonstrate the growing of potatoes, which had not previously been considered in Europe, other than in Ireland, as safe for human consumption. Indeed, they were considered to be a source of leprosy among other things. Parmentier carried out a series of publicity stunts, which led to the acceptance of potatoes in France and then throughout Europe.
The château, together with the Château de Madrid and other properties, were put on sale in February 1788, with a view to demolition. The castle fell into disrepair, and the main building was demolished in 1793.
Montgolfier brothers
The first manned flight commenced from the château on 21 November 1783, with a hot air balloon manufactured by the Montgolfier brothers lifting off from the garden of La Muette carrying Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlandes. Among the crowd who observed this feat were the royal family and Benjamin Franklin. They flew for 25 minutes, travelling almost 300 metres above Paris and covering a distance of about nine kilometres, before landing between the windmills on the Butte-aux-Cailles. Enough fuel remained on board at the end of the flight to have allowed the balloon to fly four to five times as far. However, burning embers from the fire were scorching the balloon fabric and had to be extinguished with sponges, and so the pilots decided to land as soon as they were over open countryside.
Post revolutionary history
During the French Revolution, the Château de la Muette became state property. The property was split up into several lots and sold at auction. The château returned to the royal family in 1816. One wing was given to the Minister for Finance, Louis Emmanuel Corvetto. The other wing, and most of the grounds, were purchased in 1820 by Sébastien Érard, who manufactured pianos used by Frédéric Chopin and Franz Liszt. In 1821, Sébastien Érard invented the double escapement action, which permitted a note to be repeated even if the key had not yet risen to its maximum vertical position, a great benefit for rapid playing.
In 1912, the château's then owner, the Franqueville family, sold much of the remaining property, and the former estate developed into a fashionable residential area.
Third château
Two large lots were sold to Baron Henri James de Rothschild, who built a new château in 1921 and 1922 as his Paris residence to a 19th-century design by Lucien Hesse. By the beginning of World War II, the old château had been completely demolished and replaced by mansions.
The new château was appropriated by Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine during the Second World War, and it was taken over by the United States Army after the liberation of France. In 1949, it became the headquarters of the Organization for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC) set up under the Marshall Plan to help administer funds provided by the United States to promote post-war recovery and to encourage European economic cooperation. The OEEC developed into the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in 1961, with the new Château de la Muette as its headquarters.
The "Rue André Pascal" street on which the cour d'honneur of the château opens is named after one of the pseudonyms under which Henri de Rothschild published his literary works.

Château de la Muette

Château du Haut-Buc is located in Buc, in Yvelines, France.Attached to the royal bailiwick in the late seventeenth century and located in the large park of Versailles at the time, the Haut-Buc served including Louis XIV, then King of France, to house his natural son and the Count of Toulouse Duke of Penthièvre, Louis Alexandre de Bourbon he had Madame de Montespan, and thus evade the eyes of the court before he was legitimized in 1681. In 1740, the castle was destroyed by order of Louis XV but another building was erected on the site between 1864 and 1866. This new castle was built for Leon Thomas, rich Parisian bourgeois, before being purchased in 1893 by Christmas Bardac . Sold in 1918 to Gentilli di Giuseppe, passionate astronomer will install even in the gardens a giant telescope in 1922. He left the castle in 1929 and the estate was acquired by an American couple, Mac Cune. The state bought the property in 1954 and used as a school building. The town meanwhile, does appropriates in 1988 and renovated in 2000. The Franco-German High School Buc, who left the premises of the Lycée Hoche in Versailles for the new site in the fall of 1981, was built on part of the field.
http://www.frenchchateau.net/chateaux-of-ile-de-france/chateau-du-haut-buc.html

Château du Haut-Buc

The château d’Asnières is a stately home at 89 rue du Château in the town of Asnières-sur-Seine in Hauts-de-Seine, France.
Construction
With adjoining stables at the edge of its grounds (capable of housing 120 horses and known as the "entrepôt général" or central depot for the Asnières stud), the château was one of the finest estates near Paris in the mid 18th century. It shows the artistic ambitions of Marc-René d'Argenson, marquis de Voyer, who gathered the best artists and craftsmen of his time to work on the building—the architect Jacques Hardouin-Mansart de Sagonne, the craftsman Nicolas Pineau, the sculptor Guillaume Coustou the Younger, the painters Brunetti and Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre, and the bronze worker Jacques Caffieri. Its gallery contained one of the best collections of Flemish and Dutch art of the period along with some of the largest cabinet furniture. D'Argenson wished to replace the marquis de Marigny, directeur des Bâtiments, Arts et Manufactures du Roi, brother of Madame de Pompadour, and to rival the sumptuous residences built by the duc de Richelieu at Gennevilliers, the duc de Choiseul at Clichy, by his family's enemy Madame de Pompadour at Bellevue and even by his own father at Neuilly.
He bought the château in January 1750 from Amy Pictet, a Paris banker, procurer for Isaac Thélusson, Genevan ambassador and a famous Swiss banker. The price was 60,000 livres for the building and 15,000 for the furniture. Little by little it became the central point in a vast estate. Until 1756, that estate would be formed by forcing the inhabitants of the village into long leases. The marquis' house was built on the site of a late 17th-century house built by Antoine Lemoyne, priest-doctor at the Sorbonne, which during the Regency had belonged to the famous comtesse de Parabère, the regent's mistress, who was often visited there by him.
The marquis also acquired part of the village church to become his chapel. He became director of the king's stud in 1752 and thus needed new lands to build a centre for reorganising it—these were built to designs by Mansart de Sagonne between 1752 and 1755 as a large stone-vaulted building where horses could be dressed before being sent back to the other royal studs. Their site was to the right of the present-day bridge in Asnières. They were linked to the château by a vast avenue flanked on both sides by triple rows of trees—de Sagonne had exploited a motif employed by his great-great-great-uncle François Mansart at Maisons-Laffitte. Beside the château, this avenue culminated in a forecourt leading to the main courtyard. At the back was a wing of the château destroyed in the 19th century. Behind that wing was a pavilion surrounded by a small theatre, now also demolished. During works late antique burials were discovered. Behind this wing was a rear courtyard opening onto the village square.
The centre of the wings was marked by a forecourt with semi-circular lawns and topped by a bust of the king with the marquis' monogram on the base to remind the viewer of his royal post. Some courtiers thus mocked the château d'Asnières, calling it a new royal residence built in the marquis' name. Raised on two levels and topped by a covered way in the Italian style with railings, the château has a z-shaped floor plan, evoking the Grand Trianon by de Sagonne's grandfather Hardouin-Mansart.
Asnières also included the first work by Charles de Wailly, designer of the Odéon in Paris—on his return from Italy, the marquis de Voyer entrusted him with updating the rococo dining room designed by Pineau. De Wailly added marble pilasters and a classical cornice, decorated with a mosaic frieze of putti. De Wailly also worked on the marquis' hôtel in Paris in the 1760s.
The château d'Asnières's notoriety increased during the 18th century thanks to the presence of the collector and engraver Claude-Henri Watelet then the famous Genevan banker Thélusson, future client of Claude Nicolas Ledoux. It was finally given up by the marquis in 1769 and passed through various hands. Its stud was taken back into direct royal control in 1764, remaining in service until the royal studs were dissolved during the French Revolution. The stable buildings were demolished between 1812 and 1835.
Later life
In the mid 19th century it was the setting for soirées and balls for the Parisian middle classes, mentioned by (among others) Offenbach in a first act rondo in La Vie parisienne: "Qu'on me mène au bal d'Asnières!" ("That takes me to the ball at Asnières!"). On 25 August 1850 a great international festival was put on there, gathering the best French and Belgian amateur choirs of the time and totalling 2000 singers and 25,000 spectators. Offenbach referenced this in the seventh scene in Geneviève de Brabant (1867), which takes place in the imaginary "château d’Asnières, home of Charles Martel" and includes the phrase "Amis, faisons vibrer sous ces dômes brillants / Nos chœurs les plus bruyants !" ("Friends, under these shining domes / Let's make our loudest choirs ring!"). In 1897 some of its rococo panelling was sold off and reused for the French Dining Room at Cliveden in the United Kingdom.
The building was then taken on by various religious institutions, the latest being the Institution Sainte-Agnès, which left it in 1976. A society of friends, the Association des Amis du Château et du Vieil Asnières, was set up in 1978, but the building lay empty and vandalism and bad weather left it dangerously unsafe until it was acquired by the town council in 1991 and restoration was commenced in 1996. Its garden was made a historic monument on 9 June 1971, as was the château on 18 July 1996. The restoration was completed with the reopening of the first floor on 12 September 2014.