Château d’If is a famous castle in southern France. It stands atop a small limestone island opposite the harbor of Marseille, and its terrace affords a splendid view of the port.

Château d’If History

Built by Francis I in 1524, the castle was used for several centuries as a state prison. Its inmates included the regicide Philippe Égalité and the mysterious Man in the Iron Mask imprisoned by Louis XIV.

In Alexandre Dumas’ novel The Count of Monte Cristo, the two heroes, Edmond Dantès and Abbé Faria, are confined in the Château d’If.

Chateau d’If Prison

Originally built as a naval fortress, Château d’If was converted to a prison for the city of Marseilles in 1516 and became infamous for the exclusivity of its guest list. Common criminals were imprisoned on the mainland, and in the Chateau d’If only important persons were incarcerated, the celebrated Marquises, Chevaliers, and Comptes, as well as many Protestants or Huegenots.

The cells are small, drafty, and dismal, the only view looks inward toward fellow unfortunates and a tiny cobbled courtyard, its well, and stone staircase. The cells are far from uniform, save for being uniformly grim. Each of the cells in the two-tiered prison is of an oddly-angled configuration, some with recesses for sleeping, or a fireplace, and accouterments included wall rings for fastening shackles.

Notable detainees are identified by small fading signboards affixed by the windowless doors of their former cells. One renowned prisoner was The Man in the Iron Mask, reputed to be Phillippe, twin brother of King Louis XIV. His suite was in a corner, a vaulted brick tomb with a small fireplace, a table and chair, a bitter breeze for companionship, and no hope of escape. His fate was later popularized in a novel by Alexandre Dumas.

Dumas also had his fictional character, Edmund Dantes, the Count of Monte Cristo, held in the dungeon of the chateau for five years before a harrowing escape. One non-fictional unfortunate was a ship’s captain imprisoned when it was determined that his ship was responsible for bringing the plague to Marseilles, wiping out half the population. Another noble was sentenced to six years in the chateau for failing to doff his hat when the king passed.

Chateau D’If didn’t do rehabilitation; it did retribution. Prisoners died of neglect. They went insane. Once a week, they were allowed to visit the vault-like Chapel of Notre Dame de Passion. There they thanked God that they were still alive and prayed for forgiveness.

The prison visit ends at a small museum that centers on a small fissure, through which the Count of Monte Cristo was said to have escaped to freedom.

Château d’If – Visitor info

Opening times

15th of May to 20th of September, every day between 9,40 – 17,40
21st of September to 14th of May, daily between 9,00 – 15,30 pm

Closed: The castle is closed each Monday from the 15th of September to the 31st of March, the 1st of January, and the 25th of December

See the official website for more information about ticket prices and visit: http://if.monuments-nationaux.fr/

Getting there
Ferries to Château d’If run from the Quai des Belges at the foot of La Canebiere in the old harbor of Marseilles.

A combined ticket to the Isles de Frioul with a stop at Chateau D’If costs about $15 and for Chateau D’If only, about $10.

Ferries depart every half-hour from 6:45 a.m. to 6:15 p.m. during the summer.

Château d’If Location

Château d’If Address: Embarcadère Frioul If , 1 Quai de la Fraternité, 13001 Marseille, France.

Château d’If Map

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The Château de Coucy is a castle complex in Aisne, northern France.

Château de Coucy History

The castle was built between 1225 and 1242 on a spur overlooking the valley of the River Ailette between Soissons and Laon, which cuts the road to St Quentin.

A colossal feudal fortress, strongly fortified by the lords of Coucy, who were rich enough in the territory and alliances to erect an extraordinary building, it commands the lines of approach from c. 10 km in every direction.

The site was mentioned as early as the 9th century, and in the 10th century it was already one of the most important feudal bases of the French kings; however, the complex visible today—castle, outer bailey, and walled town—was built by Enguerrand III, Lord of Coucy, between 1225 and 1242.

This great baron joined a revolt against Louis IX during the regency of Blanche of Castile, and it was at this time that he erected the fortifications as a direct challenge to royal power.

Château de Coucy at the extremity of the spur is an irregular quadrilateral defended by four circular towers each nearly 20 m in diameter, far larger than those of the royal donjons built all over France in the first quarter of the 13th century.

These towers contain hexagonal rib-vaulted chambers defended by arrow loops. In the middle of the southeast curtain wall facing the plateau, Enguerrand built an impressive donjon 31.25 m in diameter and 54 m high from the bottom of the moat, with walls 7.5 m thick at their base.

It was surrounded on two-thirds of its circumference by a revetment wall. The Donjon was entirely destroyed in 1918.

The enormous tower had only three stories, each rib-vaulted and nearly 15 m high, equivalent to five floors of a modern block of flats. At the top was a parapet with pointed crenellations, which once gave access to wooden hoardings supported on stone corbels.

Inside the castle enclosure are the ruins of a 13th-century chapel. The residential buildings along the southwest and northwest walls were entirely renovated and redecorated before 1386 by Enguerrand VII of Coucy.

Above lofty cellars, the staterooms with large traceried windows were adorned with stained glass and statues of the Nine Heroes and Heroines, historical and mythological figures celebrated in chivalric literature. Impressive remnants survive today, testimony to the desire for ostentation and luxury shown by builders in the late 14th century at the height of the Hundred Years War.

The fortification of the site also includes the wall of the town itself, with the Porte de Laon, its most prestigious feature. This magnificent structure was built in the 1240s and is remarkably well-preserved.

It is flanked by two circular towers with long arrow loops, and the entrance passage is defended by two portcullises and a murder hole, with guard rooms above and a long, vaulted corridor underneath leading to a barbican, which was entirely rebuilt in the 16th century.

The rest of the wall was defended by round towers, 12 of them dating from the 13th century; it has been renovated many times, as can be seen, for example, in the cannon loops visible at the Porte de Chauny.

Inside the wall, a fine Gothic church and medieval houses help to make Coucy one of the most representative sites of medieval architecture. Even without the donjon, it is architecturally and historically an incomparable fortified site.

As military architecture, Coucy is a clear example of principles defined by the royal architects in the first third of the 13th century, while the Porte de Laon, probably the latest building, represents a more advanced current, linked with such examples of Louis IX’s fortifications as the castles of Carcassonne and Angers.

Château de Coucy Visitor Information

Coucy Castle is managed by The Centre des monuments nationaux (Centre of National Monuments) of France.

Opening Times

It opens every day
2nd of May to 4th of September between10,00 -13,00 and 14,00 – 18,30
5th of September to 30th of April between 10,00 -13,00 and 2 to 17,30
Last admission 45 mn before closing

Closed
1st of January, 1st of May, 25th of December

Ticket Information
Adult ticket: 5 €
Reduced ticket: 3,50 €
Adult group ticket: 4,20 € pp (min 20 persons)
School group tickets: 20 € (max 35 students and 2 accompanying adults; any for the additional accompanying adult ticket price is 4,20 €)

Admission is free for:
Children under 18 (family visit)
Young people 18-25 years old (for people under 26 years old who are citizens of one of the 27 countries of EU citizens or permanent residents of France)
Disabled persons plus escorts

For more information see the official page: http://coucy.monuments-nationaux.fr/

Château de Coucy Location

Château de Coucy Address: Rue Château, 02380 Coucy-le-Château-Auffrique, France. Get help with directions using the map provided below:

Château de Coucy Map

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Château de Chenonceau is a French castle, situated on the River Cher, (in the commune of Chenonceaux) near Amboise, in Indre-et-Loire.

Château de Chenonceau History

Chenonceau was the castle of the lords of Marques originally, but in 1513 it was the property of Thomas Bohier, the treasurer of Louis XII.

He was the one who started rebuilding the castle. Later Diane de Poitiers and Catherine de Medici added improvements to Chenonceau.

Of the medieval building, only the keep on the right bank of the Cher, the ‘Tour des Marques’, survives, with 16th-century alterations. Bohier’s building, on a square plan with round, corbelled turrets at each corner, originally had three symmetrical elevations.

The fourth, the east front, is interrupted by the two unequal projections of the library and chapel. Each elevation is three stories and is three bays wide, the axial bays being wider, with larger areas of window, and topped by elaborate gables to their dormers.

The carved decoration, particularly the delicate Renaissance motifs on the entrance door to the north, is of very high quality.

Internally, the corps de logis is divided on the north–south axis by a vaulted passage, from which the four main rooms of the ground floor open. Also opening off this corridor, in the middle of the west side, is the main staircase, which is Italianate, with straight flights doubling back on themselves rather than a spiral in the French style.

The cage of the stair does not abut the external west wall, thus allowing communication between rooms to the north and south, eliminating the need for a massive projecting bay on the façade and allowing airy views of the river.

In 1536 Chenonceau passed to Francis I in settlement of Bohier’s debts; in 1547 his son Henry II gave it to Diane de Poitiers, who commissioned Philibert de L’Orme to build a covered bridge linking the château to the left bank of the Cher.

Only the five-arched bridge was built between 1556 and 1559, extending off-axis from the south front. After Catherine de’ Medici acquired Chenonceau in 1560, the bridge was topped by a two-story gallery.

This was the start of an ambitious program, soon abandoned, that would have made Château de Chenonceau into one of the largest houses in France.

Visit Château de Chenonceau

The Castle of Chenoceau is open daily. For opening hours and tickets, prices consult the official website here: http://www.chenonceau.com/en/opening-hours-a-prices

Visit area and Facilities:

The Chateau’s Interior and Gardens
Audio tours
Wax Museum
Picnic area
Restaurants and stores include a Snack bar, Tea house, Orangerie, and Souvenirs Shop.
Loire Valley Castles near:

Chateau de Chambord,
Chateau de Brissac,
Chateau de Blois,
Chateau d Azay le Rideau,
Chateau d Anet

Contact details: E-mail:info@chenonceau.com

Chateau de Chenonceau Location

Chenonceau Castle Address: 37150 Chenonceaux, France. Use this map to get directions:

Chateau de Chenonceau Map

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Château de Gaillon is a French castle situated on the River Seine about km northwest of Paris, in the department of Eure.

Château of Gaillon History

It is a medieval fortress, owned from 1263 by the Archdiocese of Rouen, previously stood on the site, built around a quadrilateral courtyard. It was ruined during the Hundred Years War but was substantially repaired by Cardinal Guillaume d’Estouteville.

The Gaillon castle was rebuilt in the Renaissance style, its earliest manifestation in France, by Georges I d’Amboise, Cardinal–Archbishop of Rouen, who had served as governor of Milan.

The gallery adjoining the Grant’Maison (rebuilt 1988) is evidence of the aesthetic changes and of the exceptional refinement of this skillful combination of Flamboyant and Renaissance sculpture.

The courtyard façades were decorated with medallions of Roman emperors and of Mars and Minerva.

There were also statues of King Louis XII (now in the Louvre), Georges I d’Amboise, and his nephew, another Cardinal–Archbishop of Rouen, Georges II d’Amboise. In the center of the court stood a large fountain (now at the Château de la Rochefoucauld in Charentes).

The château was confiscated by the Revolutionary authorities and sold to M. Darcy, who dismantled it and sold architectural elements piecemeal in Paris until 1809.

Parts were bought by Alexandre Lenoir for his short-lived Musée des Monuments Français, Paris.

After its closure, the Gaillon fragments were re-erected in 1834 by (Jacques-) Félix Duban in the main courtyard of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris. In 1975 they were returned to Gaillon as part of an extensive restoration program.

Château de Gaillon Visitor Infromation

Access to the Gaillon Castle is provided only by guided tours. A tour will last 1,30 h.

Opening times

Week (closed Tuesday): Departure Tours at 10:30, 14:30 and 16:00

Weekend: Departure Guided Tours 10:30, 14:30, 15:15, 16:00 and 16:45

Admission:

Adults (18 years): € 5
Children (6-17 years): 2 €
Children under 6 years – Free admission

Contact details:
For more information please visit de official website or contact the:
The Tourist Office at 02 32 53 08 25 and the Gaillon Town Hall at 02 32 77 50 00.

Château of Gaillon Location

Château de Gaillon Address: Allée Ermitage, 27600 Gaillon, France. Use this map to get directions:

Château of Gaillon Map

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Château Gaillard is a castle at Les Andelys, Normandy, France.

Château-Gaillard History

Richard I of England built the stronghold, of great originality, between 1197 and 1198 on the cliffs overlooking the River Seine, in order to protect Rouen and Normandy from Philip Augustus of France, to whom he had already lost several places, including Gisors.

According to legend, the castle was planned by Richard I himself; he certainly took an active interest in it, but the castle fell to the siege of 1203–1204, leaving Philip free to enter Normandy.

The plan was in harmony with the well-chosen site, a long spur connected with the plateau by a narrow tongue of land. The exposed position produced an almond-shaped (or ‘tear-drop’) solution, the point facing toward the direction of attack from the plateau. The shape was also reflected in the plan of the donjon.

In addition to the finesse of its design, the castle was very carefully built: the wall surfaces were dressed in completely regular, alternating courses of white and grey stones, giving the building the character almost of a precious object. After the castle was abandoned, most of the accessible wall facings were stripped for reuse in nearby houses.

The profoundly original design still puzzles historians of both art and siegecraft; for beneath the artful devices, it was conventional enough. If Richard did design Château Gaillard, he would have been one of the finest theoreticians of fortification in the late 12th century.

But in the event, the sophistication and refinement of the engineer–designer in the matter of fortification proved illusory in the face of the realities of war: French success was probably due to two actions, forcing the local inhabitants into the castle area, thus encumbering the besieged, and the famous entry to the castle through the latrines.

The castle’s present condition is ruinous and slightly melancholy. Of the outwork, there are only the shapeless remains of the salient tower and the splendid vestiges of curtain walls, once equipped with wooden hoardings.

The middle bailey wall is better preserved, retaining, in particular, the rectangular tower armed with arrow loops, which dominate the Seine.

The inner bailey wall is nearly intact, with its portcullised entrance and murder hole, and remains of the apartments, their windows overlooking the river, and the donjon, perhaps the most prominent memento of Richard I, the ‘Lion-hearted’, survive.

Château-Gaillard Visitor Information

Opening times

Château- Gaillard is open from April to 6 November between 10,00 – 13,00 and 14,00-18,00. The Castle is closed each Tuesday and on the 1st of May.

A ticket price is 3,20 € for individual visits and 5,30 € for guided tours. Group visits must be booked in advance.

Information and booking: official page
Phone: +33 (0)2 32 54 41 93
Email: omt@ville-andelys.fr

Château-Gaillard Map

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Château de Compiègne is a french royal palace c. 75 km north of Paris, in the département of Oise. Compiègne has been a royal residence since the 7th century when it was used by Merovingian kings.

Château de Compiègne Architecture

The present building was begun in 1751 for Louis XV, King of France, by Anges-Jacques Gabriel. It was finished in 1786 for Louis XVI by Le Dreux de la Châtre.

The plan is trapezoidal, with the garden front placed at an oblique angle to the cour d’honneur, a complexity necessitated by the awkwardness of the site.

The cour d’honneur is in Gabriel’s plain style, the emphasis being on continuous horizontals with few curved elements. The elevation comprises two high stories of equal height beneath an attic.

A classical tetrastyle pavilion front with a pediment rises in the center; a flattened version of this motif, using pilasters, is used on the upper part of the end pavilions of the side wings of the cour d’honneur, which enclose a double-colonnaded entrance screen.

The interior decoration, which survives in the Salon des Jeux of the former queen’s apartments, was executed between 1782 and 1786.

There was no damage to the building during the French Revolution although the contents were sold in 1795, and after a period as a military academy, the château de Compiegne was restored in 1807 for Emperor Napoleon I by Louis-Martin Berthault.

Now restored to their state in 1811, the interiors represent a complete ensemble of the Empire style at its best. Under the Bourbon kings, the décor was slightly modified, with royal emblems replacing imperial ones. During the Second Empire, the court often stayed at Compiègne during the autumn.

The furnishings, now rather unfashionable, were for the most part changed, and a new gallery was built that would have connected the château and the new theatre, but the theatre was never completed. It was decorated with cartoons by Charles-Joseph Natoire for the Beauvais tapestries depicting the story of Don Quixote.

After 1870 the château was gradually emptied of its contents until it was restored in the 1950s. A museum devoted to the Second Empire was created in 1953 in the marshal’s wing, and another, to the history of road transport, was set up in the kitchen wing.

Château de Compiègne Gardens
The gardens of Chateau de Compiegne were begun in 1755 to designs by Gabriel but were still incomplete in 1789. He suggested a series of five levels.

The top terrace, being the rampart on which the garden front of the château stands, was connected by steps and balustrades with the second level, which contained two parterres de broderie flanked to the north and south by symmetrically planted clumps of trees.

The third terrace, narrower in the middle, stretched out to each side with quincunxes of lime trees forming chambres de verdure, while the fourth, the plan of which was modified in 1756, contained two long parterres de broderie, between which an allée led to the fifth level, where a lake framed by broderies was to have been sited.

Beyond the ha-ha, an esplanade bordered by trees extended the garden towards the Forêt de Compiègne.

The overall plan was thus established, although the parterres on the fourth level and the lake were not executed.

Plowed up after 1789, the gardens were restored for Napoleon by Berthault. Although the basic layout was retained, including the clumps of trees and quincunxes of the lateral sections, a notable change was the substitution of a long carriage ramp for Gabriel’s flights of stairs from the château to the lower level.

In later modifications, two pavilions were constructed at the end of the quincunxes, which were simplified, and a long arbor, called ‘le berceau de l’impératrice’ and comprising trees trained over iron trellises, was planted over the length of the north path to the forest.

Several radiating allées were laid out, the central one, about 5 km long, called the Allée des Beaux-Monts, being the most important feature of the park today.

A further alteration in 1811 was the transformation of the central section of the garden into a huge lawn bordered by clumps of varied and exotic trees so that the garden now represents a combination of the informal jardin anglais and formal jardin français styles.

Visit Château de Compiègne & Museum

Opening Times

The castle and the museum are open for visits every day (except on Tuesdays) from 10,00 to 18,00 (last admission 17,15)

Between 12,30 and 13:30, the apartments of the Emperor and Empress are only accessible by guided tour

The castle is closed on the 1st of January, 1st of May, and 25th of December.

Ticket Information
Full price: € 8.50
Reduced price: € 6.50
group rate: € 7.50 per person (10 persons)

Contact details:
Official website:http://www.musee-chateau-compiegne.fr/
Tel.: 03.44.38.47.02
Fax: 03.44.38.47.01
Email: service-publics.compiegne@culture.gouv.fr

Château de Compiègne Location

Château de Compiègne Address: 3 Impasse Laly, 60200 Compiègne, France. Use this map to get directions:

Château de Compiègne Map

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Château de Chantilly, set on a rock in the otherwise flat, marshy valley of the Nonette River, was first fortified in Roman times and was in continuous occupation throughout the Middle Ages.

History of Château de Chantilly

In 1386 it was bought by Pierre d’Orgemont, Chancelier de France, who built a new castle that was completed in 1394 on the site. In 1484 Chantilly passed to the Montmorency family.

In 1524 remodeling of d’Orgemont’s castle in a French Renaissance style was begun by Anne, Duc de Montmorency, and Constable of France under Francis I, Henry II, and Charles IX. Work was interrupted by the capture of the Constable at the Battle of Pavia in 1525, but was resumed after his release.

Between 1528 and 1531 Pierre Chambiges completed the reconstruction of the north and west wings and the construction of the Galerie des Cerfs which formed one end of a walled garden.

The name derived from the many life-like stags’ heads that adorned it: they were carved in wood with real antlers and all bore on their necks the arms of Montmorency and the families with which they were allied.

In May 1538 a contract was made with Jean Chocquet, a master mason of Senlis, to construct the great terrace between the château and the park. This was an important step towards regularizing an otherwise irregular design.

A new, smaller castle, the Petit Château, was built in 1560 in proto-Baroque style on its own island in the moat but connected to the main château by a bridge.

Although there is no record of the architect, it was probably designed by Jean Bullant, who was in the service of Montmorency between 1550 and 1567 and had worked on his châteaux at Ecouen and Fère-en-Tardenois. Chantilly housed the Constable’s art collection, which included Michelangelo’s two white marble Captives (currently at Paris, Louvre), made for the tomb of Pope Julius II in S Pietro Vincoli, Rome, and many notable antiquities.

On his death at the Battle of Saint-Denis in 1567, Anne de Montmorency was succeeded by his son Henri (1534–1614), who completed his father’s work at Château de Chantilly between 1600 and 1614.

As the centerpiece of the great East terrace Henri erected a statue of his father (destroyed during the French Revolution, but replaced by a bronze equestrian version later).

His son Henri II de Montmorency built a house in the park, the Maison de Sylvie, named after his wife. Chantilly then passed to Louis II, Prince de Condé (1621–1686), the son of Henry II, Prince de Condé, and nephew of Henri II de Montmorency.

Louis, known as the Grand Condé, was a commander of Louis XIV’s armies and retired to the château in 1675 where he devoted much energy to the improvement of the park and garden.

Louis’s son commissioned Jules Hardouin Mansart to rework the façades of the château. Louis-Henri (1692–1740) commissioned the monumental Louis XV-style stables which were built between 1721 and 1735 to the designs of Jean Aubert, and the small Château d’Enghien east of the great terrace.

During the Revolution, the château was confiscated and used as a prison, and the main building was subsequently razed to ground-floor level, while the park was sold off in lots.

The Petit Château and other buildings survived these depredations. On his return from exile in 1814, Prince Louis-Joseph (1736–1818) occupied these and bought back some of the lands.

The present château (1875–1882), designed by Honoré Daumet for Henri-Eugène-Philippe-Louis, Duc d’Aumale, was built in French Renaissance Revival style on the foundations of the building largely destroyed in the Revolution, actually the surviving substructure of Pierre d’Orgemont’s 14th-century castle.

The Duc d’Aumale died in 1897, leaving Chantilly and his collection of more than 3000 manuscripts, almost 4000 drawings, and 700 paintings to the French nation. The château now houses the Musée Condé and displays important French and Italian Old Master paintings.

Château de Chantilly Gardens
Between 1522 and 1567 Anne de Montmorency enclosed the park, made a walled kitchen garden, and created the great terrace below the château’s east front.

Of these, only the terrace survives. When employed by the Grand Condé, to redesign the gardens at Chantilly (1663–1688), Andre Le Notre seized upon this feature as the fulcrum of his design.

Le Nôtre was assisted by his brother-in-law and nephew, Pierre Desgots and Claude Desgots respectively, Jean-Baptiste de la Quintinie, the creator of the Potager du Roi at Versailles, Daniel Gittard, who undertook such architectural features as the terraces, garden staircases and pavilions, the engineer Jacques de Manse, the advocate Caboud, who made the celebrated flower garden, and a team of Dutch craftsmen who made the elaborate trelliswork.

More than any other garden Chantilly Castle demonstrates Le Nôtre’s mastery when confronted with a difficult and asymmetrical site; the garden’s character is derived from the site’s abundant supply of water, which is used for its decorative value throughout.

Le Nôtre’s ingenuity is still evident in the Grand Parterre and the canal, but few of the smaller features that he designed survive, due to subsequent changes and the encroachment of the town of Chantilly itself.

His gardens are, however, depicted in a set of 50 engravings by Adam Pérelle, which were included in his Vues des belles maisons de France.

From 1773 Le Nôtre’s gardens east of the Grand Parterre were converted by Louis-Joseph, Prince de Condé with the advice of Julien-David Le Roy (from 1775) into a fashionable Jardin Anglais.

This included a mock hamlet, a group of thatched rustic buildings around a green, which anticipated the more famous hamlet of Marie-Antoinette at Versailles.

Between 1817 and 1819 the architect Victor Dubois laid out the park à l’anglaise. Since Chantilly Castle has been administered by the Institut de France, Le Nôtre’s Grand Parterre and canal, the hamlet and Maison de Sylvie have all been restored.

Château de Chantilly Visitor Information

The castle is closed every year in January on the following days: 3rd – 6th, 9th – 13th, 16th – 17th.

The castle, the museum, and its park are open for the public all year round, (except on Tuesdays), between 10 / 10,30 and 17,00 / 18,00 (summer/winter)

Guided Tours for groups (more than 20 persons) are available in different languages.

Guided Tours must be booked in advance. Info and reservations at: patrick.allais@domainedechantilly.com or + 33 (0)3 44 27 31 80

Contact details
Official website: http://www.chateaudechantilly.com/en/
Information and reservations: + 33 (0)3 44 27 31 80

Château de Chantilly Location

Château de Chantilly Address: 17 Rue Connétable, 60500 Chantilly, France. Get help with directions:

Château de Chantilly Map

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This four-towered mini-castle with roots going back to the 1600s houses an acclaimed dining room and an eight-room hotel. Construction of the original chateau was started in 1616 by a wealthy chamber servant of the Duke of Lorraine.

A round chapel with a cupola roof was added in 1703. The manor house burned down during the French Revolution but was rebuilt in the 1800s as a grand home for the owner of the city’s renowned china works.

Set on a seven-hectare estate at the edge of the city, Château d’Adomenil has its own moat to reflect its turreted roofline.

Château d’Adomenil Location

Château d’Adomenil Address: Rehainvillier, 54300 Lunéville, France. Use this map to get directions.

Château d’Adomenil Map

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The Château de Lunéville is a castle situated in Luneville, Lorraine.

Château de Lunéville History

The Château de Lunéville was patterned after the Palace of Versailles and was built between 1703 and 1720. Later on, Poland’s dethroned king, Stanislas Leszczynski, set up a court here under a special deal with King Louis XV of France who also happened to be his son-in-law.

Stanislas was named Duke of Lorraine on the understanding that the duchy would pass to France after his demise.

When he died in 1766, of burns received after falling asleep beside the chateau’s fireplace, Lorraine as a separate entity ceased to exist.

The Château de Lunéville had another moment of glory in 1801 when a peace treaty was signed there between France and Austria. But for much of its later existence, it was a garrison for soldiers or a headquarters for the cavalry. It was badly damaged in fighting to liberate the area in 1944.

In 2003 a major fire broke out in the castle which destroyed the castle’s museum, chapel, and reception.

Around the Château de Lunéville
Les Bosquets, the chateau’s extensive gardens which come complete with fountains, statuary, and flower-lined walkways, have been restored to their former glory.

The facade of the central building is still impressive and the equestrian statue of General LaSalle cuts an imposing figure outside the front entrance. But little of the original decoration remains in the few rooms open to the public as a museum.

Lunéville Castle Visitor Information

Explore the restored rooms and spaces of Lunéville’s Castle – free or guided tour visits
Visit the museum’s exhibits, courtyard, and garden.
See more information about opening hours, tickets, and guided visits on the official website.

Château de Lunéville Location

Château de Lunéville Address: Rehainvillier, 54300 Lunéville, France

Château de Lunéville Map

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Carcassonne is a medieval fortified town in Languedoc, southern France. Situated on a plateau dominating the plain of the Aude, the walled town of Carcassonne is rectangular in shape, up to 525 m long and 250 m wide.

It is still surrounded by its medieval double enclosure wall: the inner curtain is around 1245 m in length, with 29 towers, while the outer curtain has 18 towers and is about. 1320 m long. The Chateau Comtal and the former cathedral of St Nazaire also survive.

History of Carcassonne

The site was occupied as early as the 6th century BC when its strategic defensive position must already have been recognized.

The oldest parts of the inner curtain wall date either from the late Roman period (before AD 333, the date at which Carcassonne is mentioned as a castrum on the route from Bordeaux to Jerusalem) or from Visigothic times.

There are traces of several campaigns of work on the north front and the west front. During the minority of Louis IX, the seneschals of Carcassonne raised the inner wall by several meters and added an outer wall preceded by a moat.

After the revolt of 1240, Louis razed the Faubourg St Michel, which abutted the east front of the outer wall and rebuilt the section of the rampart running from the Tour de la Vade to the Barbicane St Louis. A section of the inner wall (780 m), evidently still considered weak, was rebuilt by Philip III and Philip IV between 1280 and 1287.

Finally, between 1852 and 1879, Viollet-le-Duc carried out substantial restorations, adding crenellations to the walls and giving the towers slate roofs.

The curtain walls of the earliest enclosure wall are 6–7 m high and 2 m wide. The surviving towers, which straddle the wall about every 20 m, are horseshoe-shaped and filled in at the base, but each has a chamber lit by three round-arched windows at the level of the parapet walls.

The early 13th-century exterior wall demonstrated a more active concept of defense: its towers are hollow at the base and contain superimposed, vaulted chambers with numerous arrow loops.

The improvement in weaponry and the pronounced projection of the circular towers from the wall enabled them to be spaced further apart, at rough intervals of 60–70 m.

The walls rebuilt from 1280 to 1287 are thinner, with rusticated masonry, many more arrow loops on several levels, and six towers à bec for defense against direct attack. The Porte Narbonnaise, built during this campaign, is exceptional, defended by two formidable spurred towers, a drawbridge, and the St Louis barbican.

The Château Comtal, running along the west side of the inner rampart, was built by the Vicomtes de Trencavel between 1120 and 1150.

The buildings, altered in part in the 13th, 15th, and 18th centuries, were residential and administrative: they comprised two buildings placed end-to-end parallel to the rampart and a third, built at right angles, oriented east–west; a chapel was added in the north-west corner around the year 1180.

In the 12th century, the building was described as a palace but it was transformed into a genuine fortress when the earliest enclosure wall was consolidated and the second rampart built.

Three curtain walls were built to the south, east, and north of the palace, preceded by a moat and flanked by six round towers with the same characteristics as those of the outer wall: battered bases, superimposed, rib-vaulted chambers, and stirrup-shaped loopholes.

There was provision for hoardings at the tops of the towers and curtain walls, and a bridge preceded by a barbican defended the access to the castle. The defenses were directed against the city to resist uprisings against the new royal administration.

What to see in Carcassonne:

St. Nazarius’ Basilica (11th – 20th century)
Aude Gate
Dame Carcas
Jousting Ground
Narbonnaise Gate
The Castle: Château Comtal
Théâtre Jean Deschamps

Carcassone Location

By road: From Narbonne or Toulouse, N 113 and A 61
By train: SNCF Carcassonne
By boat: Canal du Midi
By plane: Aéroport de Carcassonne Salvaza (Carcassonne Salvaza Airport)

Contact details:

Phone: + 33 (0)4 68 11 70 77
Official website: http://www.carcassonne.culture.fr/

Carcassonne Map

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The Palais du Luxembourg is currently the seat of the French Senate and it lies in the capital city of Paris.

Palais du Luxembourg History

Marie de Medici acquired in 1611 the François de Luxembourg Mansion on Rue de Vaugirard together with its large grounds outside the town walls, neighboring a Carthusian convent.

By October 1611 she was planning to have a new residence built on the site and asked her aunt, the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, for the ground plan and elevations of the Palazzo Pitti in Florence to serve for the structure of the new palace.

After she sent Louis Métezeau to Florence, Salomon de Brosse, whom she had already employed to complete her château at Monceaux-en-Brie, won a competition to become the architect.

Some additional land having been acquired, the first stone of the new palace was laid in April 1615; the new building was erected close beside the older Luxembourg Mansion, which became known as the Petit Luxembourg.

The ground plan of the Palais du Luxembourg was laid out like that of a suburban château and was reminiscent not so much of the Palazzo Pitti as of the châteaux of Verneuil or Coulommiers: it had a quadrilateral layout around a rectangular courtyard with the main building and a central staircase at the bottom of the courtyard, large pavilions built out from the corners and a terraced portico and a domed entry on the street.

The elevation, on the other hand, did recall the Palazzo Pitti.

Even before the east wing and the entrance were completed, Marie de’ Medici commissioned Rubens to execute a number of canvases to decorate the two matching galleries that were to counterpoint one another on either side of the courtyard.

Rubens executed the first suite of paintings, devoted to the Life of Marie de Medici, but produced only a few sketches for the works intended for the second gallery, which were to be dedicated to the Life of Henry IV. Work on decoration was interrupted by the Queen’s exile to Brussels in 1630.

In 1646 the Palais du Luxembourg fell into the ownership of Gaston d’Orléans, who had apparently been living there since 1643.

It was then occupied by various members of the Orléans family; the words Palais d’Orléans could be read on a marble plaque over the door until the Revolution. In 1799 the palace was assigned to the Senate.

The arcades of the entrances were closed down and the central staircase was demolished so that the Senate chamber was placed in its place.

Palais du Luxembourg – Visitor Information

Luxembourg Palace is open to the public, except during the French Senate meeting days.

Opening days

The Palace: Monday, Friday, and Saturday between 10,30 – 14, 30

Group reservations: 01.42.34.20.60 or by email.

The palace is open for individual visits one Saturday a month – Details and booking at 01.44.54.19.49 or by email

The Luxembourg Gardens are open to the public all year around between 7,30 / 8,15 and 16,45 / 21,45 (summer/winter)

Contact details:

For more information about opening hours and visiting contact the French Senate by email visites-conferences@monuments-nationaux.fr or visit the official website.

Palais du Luxembourg Location

Palais du Luxembourg Address: Senate of France 15 Rue de Vaugirard, 75006 Paris, France.

Get help with directions using the map provided below:

Palais du Luxembourg Map

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The Versailles is a town and château in France, 20 km southwest of Paris.

A hunting lodge built for King Louis XIII in 1623, Versailles was rebuilt with extensive gardens in 1631. Under King Louis XIV it became the main royal residence and the seat of the French government from 1682.

The château was enlarged in two main phases, first by Louis Le Vau in 1668, then, by Jules Hardouin Mansart in 1678. The interior decorations were carried out under the supervision of the Premier Peintre du Roi, Charles Le Brun.

Gardens
Palace of Versailles gardens laid out by André Le Nôtre, with a program of sculptures directed by Le Brun, was designed to complement the château: their solar imagery was directly related to the image of Louis XIV as the Roi Soleil (Sun King).

Further altered by Louis XV, Versailles was one of the most resplendent European palaces of the 18th century, a symbol of French royal power and an exemplar for contemporary monarchs.

In 1668 Louis XIV bought adjacent land where he built the Grand Trianon initially a pavilion, rebuilt in 1687 as a château set in its own large gardens.

The Petit Trianon was built as a pavilion in these gardens by Louis XV from 1761 to 1768. In 1774 Queen Marie-Antoinette rearranged and developed the gardens, building the Hameau (Hamlet).

Palace of Versailles History

Palace of Versailles 1623–1677
At the beginning of the 17th century, Versailles was a small village, located in an undulating, wooded region about 10 km from the royal château of Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

In 1623 Louis XIII, an enthusiastic hunter, acquired land in the district, and a hunting lodge was built for him, a modest, two-story building, with three ranges of apartments, and surrounded by a moat.

The King first stayed there in 1624. As he gradually spent more time on his Versailles estate, the hunting lodge soon became too small, and in 1631 Philibert Le Roy demolished it and built in its place a château of brick and stone.

Between 1631 and 1634 the principal range of apartments, flanked by two square blocks, was built at the back of the courtyard, followed by the north and south wings, the courtyard being enclosed by an arcaded portico. During the same period, the King purchased surrounding land, and a garden was laid out by Jacques Boyceau and Jacques de Nemours.

The young Louis XIV first visited Versailles in 1651, but the château was too small to receive the royal family and the accompanying nobility, and from 1661 Louis began to have the building enlarged by Louis Le Vau.

Two wings were built in the forecourt, one for kitchens and domestic accommodation, the other one for stables. During the same period, the King commissioned André Le Nôtre to design new gardens.

Le Vau proposed in 1668 a plan which preserved the original château at the center, surrounding it with an envelope, which entirely screened it from the garden side but left it visible from the courtyard. The new building, the envelope, was in white ashlar.

The north wing, reserved for the King, contained the Appartement des Bains on the ground floor, the Grand Appartement on the first floor, and private apartments around the Cour de Marbre. The south wing, a long block of 25 bays, contained the apartments of the Queen, her children, and the King’s brother, Philippe I, Duc d’Orléans.

On the garden side, a terrace paved in marble at the first-floor level separated the apartments of the King and Queen. Between 1671 and 1679 two additional wings to the north and south of the cour d’honneur were built to house ministers and their departments.

The palace interiors were fitted up in the 1670s while building works continued: the apartments of the King and Queen were decorated in marbles of various colours, and the ceiling paintings were entrusted to CHARLES LE BRUN and his team; the Escalier des Ambassadeurs to the north and the Escalier de la Reine to the south gave imposing access to the Grands Appartements.

At this time the King’s suite comprised six rooms: a guardroom, an antechamber, a bedchamber, and three offices. The rooms were paneled with marble, some of them were hung with richly embroidered silks and filled with sumptuous furniture.

Palace of Versailles – After 1677

The enlargement of the château was a constant preoccupation of Louis XIV, and in 1678 Jules Hardouin Mansart was put in charge of extensive building works, which gave the Palace of Versailles its definitive appearance.

New wings, the Ailes du Nord and du Midi were added north and south of the main block; the Galerie des Glaces replaced the first-floor terrace, with Le Vau’s projecting blocks turned into the Salon de la Guerre at one end and the Salon de la Paix at the other.

To accommodate the services, the Grandes, and Petites Ecuries were built opposite the château, together with the Grand Commun. The works continued until 1686 and 1687, employing a vast number of artists and craftsmen. The King regularly inspected progress in the company of Hardouin Mansart, Le Nôtre, and Le Brun.

The exterior, in a style of elegant classicism, has an arcaded, rusticated ground floor, supporting a main floor with round-headed windows divided by pilasters; the attic story is crowned by a balustrade bearing sculptured trophies.

In May 1682 Versailles became the king’s official residence and the seat of government. The Grand Appartement was converted to an apartment of state; the salons of Diana, Venus, Mars, Mercury, and Apollo were used for concerts, games, and refreshments.

The Galerie des Glaces, with an arcade of 17 mirrors facing the windows looking onto the gardens, had a vault 73 m long, decorated with a scheme of allegorical paintings by Le Brun proclaiming the achievements of Louis and of France between 1661 and 1678.

This was the most privileged part of Versailles, where the courtiers might observe the monarch proceeding to mass or to receptions from his private apartments, located directly behind the Galerie des Glaces, around the inner Court, the Cour de Marbre, in the old part of the château.

At the end of his reign, this suite consisted of a guardroom, two antechambers, his bed-chamber, the Cabinet du Conseil, and a series of salons and small galleries in which he kept collections of paintings and objets d’art. Later, these salons and galleries were to be radically altered during the reign of Louis XV.

The last building erected during Louis XIV’s reign was the Chapel, begun in 1699 to plans prepared by Hardouin Mansart and finished by Robert de Cotte. It was dedicated in 1710, five years before the King’s death.

Louis XV first lived in Paris and Vincennes and took up residence at Versailles only in 1722. He respected the earlier work, leaving unchanged the exterior of the château and the Grands Appartements.

From 1738, however, he greatly altered the cabinets of Louis XIV on the north side of the Cour de Marbre. New salons were created to form a more intimate suite, decorated with magnificent white and gold paneling by Jacques Verberckt and Anges-Jacques Gabriel.

In the same part of the palace, the King had a suite of small, richly decorated, and furnished private rooms built around an interior courtyard known as the Cour des Cerfs, reached by interior staircases. Since the King’s large family was accommodated in the palace, the Appartement des Bains was replaced by suites of rooms fitted out for his children and their households.

There was, however, no large theatre: temporary auditoria had been set up as circumstance demanded, notably (until its demolition in 1752) on the landing of the Escalier des Ambassadeurs.

Gabriel had been involved in plans for an opera house as early as 1748, but the Opéra was finally built at the end of the Aile du Nord for the marriage of the Dauphin (the future Louis XVI) to Marie-Antoinette, Archduchess of Austria, in 1770.

In 1771 Gabriel made plans to rebuild in stone the façades of the buildings around the Cour Royale on the city side, to harmonize them with Hardouin Mansart‘s work on the garden side. This ‘grand dessein’ was suspended by financial difficulties at the end of the reign, and only the interior wing on the north side was redone. Louis XVI, succeeding in 1774, showed the same respect for the work of Louis XIV and made only a few changes to his inner apartments.

In October 1789 Louis XVI and the royal family were forced to leave Versailles under pressure from the revolutionary Parisian crowd. Versailles, abandoned during the revolutionary period, was stripped of most of its furniture, which was auctioned in 1793 and 1794, and the building slowly deteriorated.

Some restoration work was undertaken by Napoleon I in 1810 and by Louis XVIII in 1820, but the main effort to protect it was not begun until the reign of Louis-Philippe, who as early as 1833 was determined to create at Versailles a museum dedicated to ‘Toutes les Gloires de la France’.

Major works were implemented. The Ailes du Nord and du Midi were converted into museum galleries housing extensive collections of 17th, 18th, and 19th-century paintings and sculptures.

Some of the work undertaken in this period was spectacular: the Galerie des Batailles on the first floor of the Aile du Midi was 120 m long and decorated with 33 pictures illustrating the greatest French military victories, from Tolbiac (496) to Wagram (1809); the Salles des Croisades, evoking the medieval crusades to the Holy Land; the Salles d’Afrique, which recalled the conquest of north Africa in the reign of Louis-Philippe himself.

The new museum and the old royal apartments within the main central block opened in 1837.

Since then the Musée National du Château de Versailles has maintained these two aspects: the Galeries Historiques comprising the Musée de l’Histoire de France, and the royal and princely apartments in the central part of the palace, which has been restored and refurbished in successive campaigns since they were opened.

Palace of Versailles Gardens

In 1661, when Louis XIV began to enlarge the Château of Versailles, the surrounding grounds were in a rudimentary state, although some avenues had been laid out and box-edged flower beds placed round the château in the 1630s under the direction of Jacques Boyceau and Jacques de Nemours.

The King acquired further land (at the end of his reign the estate extended over 2473 ha, now reduced to 815 ha) and had gardens designed and laid out by Andre le Notre which would harmonize with Le Vau’s new building.

Louis paid the greatest attention to the design of the gardens, visiting them daily whenever at Versailles; in 1689 he even wrote a kind of guidebook for visitors, Manière de montrer les jardins de Versailles, revised several times until 1705.

The grounds still retain the general structure of Le Nôtre’s layout: a principal east–west axis flanked by parallel secondary axes north and south, and intersected by four north–south avenues. In the grid squares thus defined, Le Nôtre, succeeded by Jules Hardouin Mansart, installed groves (bosquets) and fountains.

The east–west axis ran from the terrace of the château via the Parterre d’Eau, with the bronze allegorical statues of the rivers of France, the Latone steps, the Parterre de Latone, and the Tapis Vert walk, to the Bassin du Char d’Apollon at the beginning of the 1560 m Grand Canal.

On the south side, the gardens terminated with the Pièce d’Eau des Suisses, which extended the Parterre de l’Orangerie towards the château, and the Orangery built by Hardouin Mansart under the Parterre du Midi.

To the north, the gardens slope down to the Bassin de Neptune by way of the Parterre du Nord, the Pyramide fountain, and the Allée d’Eau. Some bosquets survive to evoke the splendor of Louis XIV’s grounds: on the south, the Salle de Bal (or Bosquet des Rocailles) by Le Nôtre and the Colonnade, built by Hardouin Mansart; and to the north, the Bosquet d’Encelade and the Bosquet des Dômes, both by Le Nôtre.

The excavation, setting out, and decoration of the bosquets and the numerous modifications lasted nearly 40 years. One of the essential elements of the gardens was the waterworks: the prominence of water and the diversity of its use excited the admiration of contemporaries but involved the king in extensive engineering works to draw it from the rivers Seine and Eure; for example, the construction in 1681 of the ‘Machine de Marly’, 14 waterwheels designed to pump the 6000 cubic meters that were daily required to operate the fountains.

Garden Sculptures

The sculpted decoration of the Chateau de Versailles gardens was undertaken at the same time. The decorative theme was often inspired by solar myth and so connected to the person of the Roi Soleil, as, for instance, the Bassins des Saisons and the 24 statues commissioned by Jean Baptiste Colbert in 1674 and inspired by the Iconologia of Cesare Ripa.

The first sculptures in gilded or painted lead were replaced by statues of white marble, either copy of antiques or works carved under the direction of Charles Le Brun. It was not until 1684 that the first sculptures cast in bronze by the Keller brothers, Johan Jacob and Balthasar, appeared on the grounds.

These carvings, which made the gardens of Versailles the largest contemporary open-air museum of sculpture, were the work of sculptors from the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, such artists as François Girardon, Martin Desjardins, Gaspard and Balthazard Marsy and Antoine Coyzevox.

Louis XV and Louis XVI made a few changes to the gardens of the château. During the former’s reign, Anges-Jacques Gabriel altered the layout of the Bassin de Neptune, created by Le Nôtre, and set up the lead sculptures by Edme Bouchardon, Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne and Lambert-Sigisbert and Nicolas-Sébastien Adam. Louis XVI replanted the grounds, too many old trees have died.

A few of the original bosquets were removed and some altered: the Bains d’Apollon north of the Parterre de Latone, which was altered to an anglo-chinois style after a design by Hubert Robert, and at the south edge of the grounds the Labyrinthe was replaced by the modest Jardin de la Reine.

Abandoned after 1789, the grounds were partially restored under Louis XVIII between 1816 and 1824, and restoration and replanting are still continuing.

Grand and Petit Trianons at Versailles

The Grand Trianon

In 1668 Louis XIV bought Trianon, next to the Versailles estate, and commissioned Louis Le Vau to build him a house there. The pavilion finished in 1670 and decorated with white and blue tiles much like Delftware, became known as the ‘Trianon de Porcelaine’.

Its gardens, designed by Michel Le Bouteux, a nephew of André Le Nôtre, became famous for the beauty, variety, and scent of their flowers. Le Vau’s pavilion deteriorated rapidly, and in 1687 the King appealed to Jules Hardouin Mansart to replace it with a château of white stone and pink marble.

The work was completed in a few months, supervised very closely by the King.

The building consists of two L-shaped single-story wings, linked by a marble peristyle with piers of Languedoc and Campanian marble.

The façades are articulated by Languedoc marble pilasters. The building has a low-pitched roof, the parapets punctuated with vases, trophies, and stone statues.

The main courtyard, enclosed by a wrought-iron grille, gives access to the peristyle and thence to the gardens, which were enlarged by Le Nôtre and Le Bouteux in 1687.

The south wing contains the suite occupied by Louis XIV between 1691 and 1703, and, from 1810, by Empress Marie-Louise on her rare visits to Trianon. The salons, overlooking the garden, include the Salon des Glaces, the bedchamber, the antechamber of the Chapel, and finally, the first antechamber, which opens onto the peristyle.

The north wing comprises two parallel series of apartments. On the garden side, a suite of rooms used by Louis XIV until 1691 became the 19th-century reception salon.

Behind them, looking east over the Jardin du Roi is a suite with smaller rooms occupied during Louis XIV’s reign by Madame de Maintenon, and which Napoleon I fitted out as a private apartment, comprising an antechamber, a study, a bathroom, a bedchamber, and a dining room.

The north wing leads to the wing known as Trianon-sous-Bois through a gallery decorated with paintings commissioned by Louis XIV from Jean Cotelle II and Etienne Allegrain, which depict the principal groves and gardens of Versailles and Trianon.

The chapel created by Louis-Philippe on the site of Louis XIV’s former billiard room stands at the junction of the two wings. The Trianon-sous-Bois wing is built in stone without marble veneer and consists of a main story with an attic.

The gardens of the Grand Trianon have largely preserved the layout. They lie along an east–west axis leading from the peristyle, with a high parterre with two pools, dropping to the low parterre, which leads to the large Bassin du Plat-Fond or Miroir.

When the Grand Trianon itself was built, the plans for the garden were entrusted to Le Nôtre, then, at his death in 1700, to Hardouin Mansart, who finished planting the bosquets. From that time the garden developed northwards in a formal sequence comprising the Buffet d’Eau, the Jardin des Marronniers, the Amphithéâtre des Antiques, and many ‘Salles Vertes’.

At the end of the Trianon-sous-Bois wing, the Jardin de Laocöon leads back to the former Jardin des Sources and the Jardin du Roi. The sculptural decoration of the Trianon gardens was installed byHardouin Mansart in 1704: the sculptures for the water basins are mostly reused from the Bassins des Saisons in the grounds of Versailles.

Towards the end of the 18th century, the Trianon gardens were neglected in favor of Marie-Antoinette’s works at the Petit Trianon, and they were further modified during alterations made to the château under the Empire.

Two guard houses were built at the entrance to the grounds and near the old Jardin des Sources a small bridge spanned a ha-ha. It now connects the grounds of the Palace of Versailles Trianons.

Louis XIV used Trianon as a private retreat and held festivities, concerts, and suppers for selected guests. His successors were less interested in the château.

Its furniture was sold during the Revolution, but in 1805 Napoleon I had it restored and entirely refurnished. Louis-Philippe, in the image of his ancestor Louis XIV, came to Trianon often with his family. In the restoration of the château between 1962 and 1966 the mural decorations were restored to their 17th-century state, while the furniture is on the whole that of the Empire period.

The Petit Trianon

In 1749 Louis XV extended the Trianon gardens towards the north-east, installing a farm, ‘la nouvelle ménagerie’, which included a superb botanic garden; a second botanic garden located near the château was organized by Bernard de Jussieu. In 1761, on the advice of the Marquise de Pompadour, the King commissioned Anges-Jacques Gabriel to build a pavilion within the Trianon Gardens.

Built from 1762 to 1768, the five-bay façades of white stone are articulated by fluted Corinthian columns and pilasters. The building has a basement, main floor, and attic story, but the basement is properly visible only on the side facing the botanical garden, leaving the salons themselves at courtyard level.

Following his accession in 1774, Louis XVI gave the Petit Trianon and its grounds to Marie-Antoinette, who, following Louis XV, created a seven-room apartment on the main floor.

The mezzanine and attic accommodated several of the Queen’s intimates. It was the rearrangement of the gardens that engaged the Queen’s full attention. She drew on the advice of both her architect Richard Mique and an enlightened amateur, the Comte de Caraman.

These gardens were laid out in the Anglo-Chinois style: artificial hills, grottoes, rivers, and lakes were created, with sinuous footpaths winding among them, revealing in their twists and turns the many charming buildings commissioned by the Queen.

A small Belvédère overlooked the Grotto and the Petit Lac; and on an island in the ‘river’ stands the Temple de l’Amour, built-in 1778 by Mique, with Joseph Deschamps.

Marie-Antoinette’s garden was extended by the Hameau (Hamlet), a group of 12 peasant houses made of cob and roofed with tiles or thatch, built by Mique from 1783 to 1785: they include the Moulin with its waterwheel, the Boudoir, the Réchauffoir, the Maison du Billard connected to the Maison de la Reine by a wooden gallery, the Colombier, the Maison du Garde, the Tour de Marlborough, and the Laiterie de Propreté.

The Grange, which served as a ballroom, and the Laiterie de Préparation have disappeared.

In 1805 Napoleon, charmed by the Petit Trianon, ordered it to be restored and had the Hameau fitted out for Empress Marie-Louise. In 1837,

Louis-Philippe, having completed the transformation of Versailles into a historical museum, restored the two châteaux at Trianon and their gardens.

In 1867, the year of the Exposition Universelle in Paris, Empress Eugénie assembled at the Petit Trianon a collection of objects recalling the memory of Marie-Antoinette and her family. The interior of the Petit Trianon has been restored to its state.

Palace of Versailles – Visitor Information

Ticket information:
A ticket price to the Palace interior is 15 € / 13 € reduced

A visit to the Trianon Palaces and Marie-Antoinette’s Estate will cost you 10 / 6 €

The private apartments of Louis XV and Louis XVI, the Royal Opera, and the Royal Chapel are only available through guided tours and the ticket price is 16 €.

A ticket passport includes access to the entire Complex of Versailles, including the palace, gardens, exhibitions, Trianon Palaces, and Marie-Antoinette’s Estate. The price is 18 €.

Opening times

The palace is closed every Monday and on public holidays: the 1st of January, the 1st of May, and the 25th of December. See details about the opening times on the official website.

Palace of Versailles Location

Château de Versailles Address: Place d’Armes, 78000 Versailles, France.

Palace of Versailles Map

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Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte History

Vaux-le-Vicomte is a French château, 6 km north-east of Melun, in the département of Seine-et-Marne. It was built between 1656 and 1661 by Louis Le Vau for Nicolas Fouquet, Louis XIV’s Surintendant des Finances. The gardens were laid out by André Le Nôtre under Le Vau’s guidance.

The forerunner of Versailles, it is the most important château built in France in the mid-17th century; it was here that Le Vau, Le Brun and Le Nôtre learned to work as a team and to produce the unity of architecture, interior decoration, and garden layout that distinguishes the Louis XIV style.

Built-in creamy limestone, the main block of the château is of compact design and sits in splendid isolation, surrounded by a moat and with an inner forecourt without flanking wings.

The entrance front is a series of recessed planes with two-bay outer pavilions with tall roofs overlapping two-bay inner pavilions with mansard roofs that provide a necessary intermediary between the lower roof of the main block.

The outer forecourt beyond the moat is flanked by two vast courtyards of stables and service buildings in brick and stone, providing the architectural overture to the château and the huge formal gardens beyond.

The château and courtyards are visually related by the use of tall roofs on the pavilions nearest the château and mansard roofs on those nearest the entrance gates.

On the garden side of the château the composition is dominated by an oval dome, a feature first introduced by Le Vau at Le Raincy. All these elements were hurriedly assembled by Le Vau (the outer shell of the building was completed in a single year, with 18,000 workmen simultaneously employed), which probably explains why the elevations are not well marshaled: the projecting oval Salon in particular does not harmonize with the rest of the garden façade.

Inside the château, Le Vau placed the main apartments on the ground floor, thus obviating the need for a grand staircase. A triple archway motif links the front entrance, the rectangular entrance hall, the domed oval Salon beyond, and in turn the door onto the perron overlooking the gardens. To the left of the Salon are the rooms intended for the King, while to the right are those of Fouquet.

Interior Decoration
The interior decoration was entrusted to Le Brun, who designed the paintings, stuccowork, and tapestries, thereby giving the interiors a noble unity of style. Originally there were 143 tapestries, many wovens at the factory established by Fouquet in the nearby village of Maincy.

Some of the interior statuary, notably in the Grand Salon, was by François Girardon, who also executed the elaborate stucco decoration in conjunction with Nicolas Legendre.

The ceilings at Vaux-le-Vicomte are of particular interest. That of the first vestibule (now the dining room) to the right of the entrance hall retains the tradition of exposed and delicately painted beams, which is typically French.

In the Chambre du Roi, the ceiling is an elaborate composition of allegorical paintings, ornate moldings, and figures in full relief, which is typically Italian and probably based on Pietro da Cortona’s work in the Pitti Palace, Florence.

The decorations were almost complete, with the notable exception of the painting of the interior of the dome, for the famous celebrations on 17 August 1661, when Fouquet entertained Louis XIV and the Court, three weeks before his arrest and disgrace.

His arch-enemy Jean-Baptiste Colbert wasted no time in appropriating Fouquet’s team of artists and craftsmen to the service of the King and removing the finest statues and rarest trees in the park to Versailles.

Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte Gardens

The gardens at Vaux-le-Vicomte were the first great work of André Le Nôtre.

One of the objects of his extensive layout was to present a number of ‘pictures’ of the house. In his own plan of the gardens, he showed the avenue running north from the entrance gates to a rond-point, from which only the central block of the château is visible.

This avenue is intersected with another at exactly the point at which not only the château but also its flanking archways are included in the picture. The underlying principles of the layout were that the formality of the château required a corresponding formality in its immediate surroundings and that the landscape should be the creation of human reason, making use of all that perspective, proportion, and a subtle touch of optical illusion could confer.

Le Nôtre built his design along a central axis 800 m long from the windows of the Salon to the once-gilded colossal copy of the Farnese Hercules by Michel Anguier, which marks the horizon to the south. Anguier was the major provider of outdoor sculpture at Vaux-le-Vicomte.

The first impression is one of symmetry, but this is soon perceived to contain a refreshing note of variety. The land gently dips towards the small valley of the Anqueuil, a slope that has been cleverly used to conceal a number of features, notably the Grandes Cascades, which overlook the canalized stream and are answered by the grotto on the opposite bank.

To the east, the ground rises sufficiently to enable walks at two different levels and some impressive flights of stone steps, in particular the Grille d’Eau at the end of the first transverse alley, which served as an outdoor theatre for Molière.

The gardens were reconstructed in the early 20th century by M. Alfred Sommier, omitting only the Allée d’Eau, which formed an avenue of fountains linking the first and second transverse alleys.

Visit Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte

Opening times:

The castle is open during summer time, from March to November, 10.00 and 18.00 (last admission: 17,45)

The castle is closed in wintertime except in December when it is open on weekends.

Ticket Information:
An adult ticket is 14 / 16 € (Simple visit vs. Complete visit). for children, 6 -16 years old the ticket is 11 / 13 € and a family ticket is 44 / 52 €.

Audioguide is available in 7 different languages: 2 € per unit.

Guided visit tickets are also available from 180 € (max. 30 persons). See more information here.

Contact details:
Official website: vaux-le-vicomte.com
Phone: +33 (0)1.64.14.41.90
Fax: +33 (0)1.60.69.90.85
Email: chateau@vaux-le-vicomte.com

Chateau de Vaux-le-Vicomte Location

Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte Address: 77950 Maincy, France. Get help with directions using the map provided below:

Chateau de Vaux-le-Vicomte Map

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Chateau de Saint-Germain-en-Laye is a French royal castle, west of Paris in the Yvelines département.

Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye History

Work at the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye was begun in 1124 by Louis VI as a fortified hunting lodge in the forests of St Germain and Marly on the site of a 10th-century monastery founded by Robert the Pious.

Around 1238 Louis IX replaced an earlier chapel of 1223 built by Philip II Augustus with the present Sainte Chapelle, consisting of three bays and an apse. It has portals, a rose window, and sharp tracery details that are clearly by the same hand as the later parts of the abbey church of Saint-Denis.

It served as a prototype for the Sainte Chapelle in Paris. In 1370 Charles V rebuilt the château on an irregular rhomboid plan.

In 1539 Francis I decided to rebuild the château of Saint-Germain, using Pierre Chambiges as an architect. They used the irregular foundations of the old château and retained the old keep and probably the chemin-de-ronde, at ground-floor level, of Charles V’s château, which resembled the one that he had built at Vincennes.

On the exterior façades, this gave the architect a ‘podium’ on which to raise his dignified elevations. Within the courtyard he had to create his podium, resulting in the awkward superimposition of one two-story structure on another. The use of the round-arched opening surmounted by a pediment for the windows of the main floor, Venetian in origin, suggests the influence of Sebastiano Serlio.

The result is a mixture of Gothic and Renaissance elements that is strangely archaic in comparison with such earlier 16th-century châteaux as Chambord and Fontainebleau. It was, however, in advance of its times in its flat roof, ‘the first of its sort in Europe.

In 1553 Henry II commissioned Philibert de L’Orme to build the Château Neuf, which provided a sort of ‘royal lodge’, perched on the edge of the high ground in front of the Vieux Château overlooking a magnificent view of the Seine Valley. In 1559 Francesco Primaticcio took over where de L’Orme left off, but it remained for Henry IV to complete the building.

It was originally described as a ‘theatre’, and its central courtyard, in plan a square with large semicircular projections to each side, may well have served such a purpose.

Louis XIV was often in residence at Saint-Germain until he moved definitively to Versailles in 1682: in 1663 André Le Nôtre laid out for him the parterre beneath the windows of the king’s apartment, and also the long Allée des Loges, which formed the perspective.

Two years later he planted 5.5 million trees and created the long sloping ride from the Château Neuf to the bottom of the valley. In 1669 Jules Hardouin Mansart redesigned the king’s apartments in the Vieux Château, replacing the sloping roof of the chemin-de-ronde with a leaded walk and wrought-iron balustrade.

In 1681 he added pavilions to the angles of the old château. From the later 1680s until his death in 1701 the château was occupied by the exiled James II of England.

In 1777 the Château Neuf was bought by the Comte d’Artois (later Charles X) who immediately pulled it down. Its projected replacement by François-Joseph Belanger was never built.

The terraces were largely destroyed when the road was made from the Pont du Pecq up to Saint-Germain.

The Vieux Château was restored in 1855 by Eugène-Louis Millet, who, among other works, removed Hardouin Mansart’s angle pavilions. Since 1867 the Vieux Château has housed the Musée des Antiquités Nationales de France.

Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye and Musée des Antiquités Nationales Visits

Opening times and tickets

The Chateau & Museum is open every day except Tuesdays from 10,00 to 17,15. Guided tours for groups can be booked at 9 am.

Please note that on public holidays it is best to call 0139101300 for confirmation of the museum’s opening.

A ticket price is 6 € and a discount ticket is 4,5 €

Please consult the official website for more information:

Contact details:
http://www.musee-archeologienationale.fr/index.php
Phone: 0140134913
Fax: 0140134911
Email: museecie@rmn.fr

Chateau de Saint-Germain-en-Laye Location

Address: National Archaeological Museum:18 Place Charles de Gaulle, 78100 Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France. Use this map to get directions:

Chateau de Saint-Germain-en-Laye Map

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History of Chateau de Rambouillet

Château de Rambouillet is a French castle located near Paris, best known for its gardens, laid out between 1700 and 1789.

The Château de Rambouillet was built and maintained by the d’Angennes family from the 14th to the 17th centuries.

To accommodate the site surrounding the château, essentially a flat, swampy terrain, a canal of 740 m was built that permitted him to establish parterres close to the château: a geometrical quincunx was laid out to the west, and an avenue of cypress trees from Louisiana (unique in Europe) were planted to the east.

A second, transverse, canal created a view toward the forest and the horizon. In the trapezoid formed by these canals were two islands, one of which housed a grotto dedicated to François Rabelais. A tapis vert (a flat expanse of grass) separated the canals from the fringes of the forest of Rambouillet.

Between 1705 and 1737 Louis-Alexandre, Comte de Toulouse (1678–1737), the legitimized son of Louis XIV and Mme de Montespan, greatly enlarged the château, but it was his son, Louis de Bourbon, Duc de Penthièvre (1725–1793), who extended the area between the canal and the tapis vert and created an English garden between 1737 and 1783.

Garden fabrics, including an arrangement of rocks intended to suggest a grotto, a hermitage, and a thatched cottage, reflected the prevailing taste for the Picturesque and the sensibility of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

The pastoral character for which the gardens of Rambouillet are celebrated was, however, established by Louis XVI, who bought the property in 1783. Marie-Antoinette’s Neo-classical pavilion, the Queen’s Dairy, was designed for her by Hubert Robert and constructed in 1785–1788 by Jacques-Jean Thévenin.

The Rambouillet Castle, which suffered during the Revolution and from the subsequent restoration under Napoleon I, is now maintained by the Monuments Historiques; it is the official country residence of the President of France.

Visitor Information

Opening times

The Castle is open every day except on Tuesdays:

April – September: between 10,00 – 11,00 and between 14,00 – 17,00
October – March between 10,00 – 11,00 and between 14,00 – 16,00

The Castle is closed every Tuesday, and on holidays:
1st of January, 1st of May, 1st and 11th of November, 25th of December

Tickets:

An adult ticket price is 7€ and a group ticket price is 5,50€ (min. 20 pers)

A school group ticket is 30€ and includes max. 35 students, 2 accompanying adults. For additional adults, a ticket cost is 5,50€

Free admission:

Children under 18 (family visit)
Young people between 18 – 25, if they are UE citizens or French residents.
Disabled persons + escorts

Contact details:
Phone – 01 34 83 00 25 / 01 34 94 28 79
Fax – 01 34 94 28 58
Email – rambouillet-reservation@monuments-nationaux.fr

Château de Rambouillet Location

Château de Rambouillet Address: 78120 Rambouillet, France. Get help with directions using the map provided below:

Château de Rambouillet Map

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It was built between 1679 and 1683 for Louis XIV as an annex to Versailles by Jules Hardouin Mansart, Charles Le Brun, and André Le Nôtre. The site was an important source of water for the Château de Versailles fountains.

The buildings were sold during the French Revolution and demolished in the 19th century, but the site still shows the main outlines of the gardens.

Château de Marly History

Louis XIV bought the land at Marly in 1677, the year before the final enlargement of Versailles, which had originally served him as a Maison de Plaisance for privileged house parties.

He needed a new base for such activities and chose to build at Marly where the site takes the form of a vast re-entrant, of which the principal contour line follows the shape of a capital U opening towards the valley of the Seine to the north. The high, wooded hills gave a pleasing sense of privacy with their intimacy and exclusiveness.

At the focal point of the re-entrant was built the Pavillon du Roi, a two-story house with a square ground plan and with four identical façades. In the earliest designs, these façades are blank except for the quoins. This was because the rich architectural detail of fluted Corinthian columns and bas-reliefs was achieved by mural painting, mostly by Jacques Rousseau.

The effect was highly colorful. The pilasters imitated the red marble of Languedoc and the podium verde antico; the bas-reliefs were picked out in gold against a royal blue. On the same contour line that forms the two arms of the U to the north were built twelve small pavilions, six on each side, for the King’s guests.

The designs for these by Hardouin Mansart varied between façades proportioned to the Doric or Ionic order and ornately Baroque compositions with caryatids and panels in low relief. They faced inwards, over a series of terraced walks, to the Grande Pièce d’Eau, which occupied the center of the re-entrant.

To east and west, and set closer in, were the chapel and Salle des Gardes enclosing an entrance court to the east of the Pavillon du Roi and a building always known as the ‘Perspective’ to the west. It took its name from the great architectural trompe l’oeil painted by Rousseau.

The effect was like that of an open peristyle, similar to the one at the Trianon de Marbre at Versailles. Between its stately rows of columns appeared two long, colonnaded wings framing a distant prospect of classical landscape.

The octagonal Salon was the center of the Pavillon du Roi and the center of life at Marly. On four sides glazed doors, each gave access to a vestibule. On the other facets were four fireplaces surmounted by tall, round-arched mirrors. The Salon occupied the full height of the building; a Corinthian order marked the ground floor and upheld an elaborate entablature. At the first-floor level, the pilasters were replaced by caryatids.

In 1694 Hardouin Mansart took over responsibility for the gardens from Le Nôtre.

The gardens were divided into four main areas: that immediately surrounding the château; the central axis to the north with three large pièces d’eau; the Bosquets de Louveciennes to the east; and the Bosquets de Marly to the west.

The principle of the bosquet, with its high, flat walls of hornbeam, forming an open-air extension to the apartments, is well illustrated here in the names—the Vestibule de la Table, the Cabinet de la Belle Vue, and the Salon du Couchant.

The gardens were well supplied with water by the gigantic pump known as the Machine de Marly (completed 1684), which forced the water of the Seine up to a reservoir above the gardens. The garden sculpture at Marly was of a more bucolic and light-hearted character than that at the Palace of Versailles.

Marly le Roi Museum – Visitor Information

Located in the Park of Marly, in the town of Marly-le-Roi, the Museum Promenade, is an interactive illustration of the Chateau de Marly.

It hosts an impressive collection of fine art, decorative art, and archeology that shows in a very interactive way the old former residence of the Sun King.

Musée-Promenade official website: http://www.musee-promenade.fr
Marly le Roi official website: http://www.marlyleroi.fr/

Marly le Roi Park and Museum Map

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This royal hunting lodge was first mentioned in 1137 and became for nearly 350 years the chief palace of the kings of France, who were attracted by the hunting afforded by the Forêt de Bière.

The present château dates from the rebuilding and enlargements of Francis I started in 1528 and from the modifications undertaken by subsequent sovereigns until 1868. As a result of this piecemeal construction, Fontainebleau is a complex, irregular structure of different dates and styles.

History of Château de Fontainebleau

The Palace Before 1610

In April 1528 Francis I commissioned a program of building at Fontainebleau.

The Cour de l’Ovale was to be rebuilt using the old foundations and retaining the old keep, while a gallery, now the Galerie François I, was to be constructed linking this with the Trinitarian abbey to the west, which was soon demolished and replaced by the Cour du Cheval Blanc.

This was named after a plaster cast (untraced) of the horse from a statue of Emperor Marcus Aurelius in Rome.

The first floor of the Cour de l’Ovale has a Corinthian order of flat pilasters, and the tall roof is pierced by large dormers with triangular pediments. A colonnade was added in 1541 and runs around most of the ground floor. The medieval gatehouse in the southwest corner was rebuilt in Renaissance style, based on the entrance to the ducal palace at Urbino.

At the châteaux of Blois and Chambord, Francis I had favored a rich external decoration with the internal walls left bare for tapestry. At Fontainebleau, however, this was reversed: the façades are of austere simplicity, as the stone used was unsuitable for sculpture, while the interior received rich and permanent decoration.

The most complete interior surviving from Francis I’s reign is the gallery bearing his name on the first floor of the block that joins the Cour de l’Ovale to the Cour du Cheval Blanc.

Another survival of Francis I’s period now forms the upper story of the Escalier du Roi. This was the bedroom of the Duchesse d’Etampes, containing frescoes of Alexander the Great set in stucco frames.

By the death of Francis I, the Palace of Fontainebleau had acquired much of its present appearance: the Cour de l’Ovale, the Cour du Cheval Blanc, and the gallery that joined them were all begun and mostly completed, while the Cour de la Fontaine, with the Galerie Francois I to the north and a range of kitchen buildings ending in the Pavillon des Poêles to the west, was not.

Catherine de Medici commissioned Primaticcio to enclose the Cour de la Fontaine on the east by what became known as the Aile de la Belle Cheminée. He produced what is perhaps the most distinguished façade in the whole palace, fusing French and Italian styles with a double flight of steps against the central block between the end pavilions. It was to set the style for the whole Cour de la Fontaine.

Henry IV made considerable alterations and additions to Chateau de Fontainebleau. He enclosed a new courtyard (begun in 1599) to the north of the Galerie François I and Cour de l’Ovale around the Jardin de la Reine (1l; now the Jardin de Diane).

The only part to survive contains the Galerie des Cerfs on the ground floor with the Galerie de Diane above. The Jardin de Diane is now named after the Fountain of Diana, the plinth of which bears bronze figures by Pierre Biard.

The east side of the Cour de l’Ovale was made into the main entrance by straightening out the wings and bringing in a triumphal arch, originally in the Cour du Cheval Blanc, and now crowned with a square dome.

Further to the east Henry built the Cour des Offices, designed by Rémy Collin, with one- and two-story ranges around three sides of a quadrangle and its main entrance in the form of a heavily rusticated niche. Henry also refaced the south front of the Galerie François I and, by means of some remodeling, continued this more dignified architecture round to Le Breton’s west front overlooking the Cour du Cheval Blanc.

Under Henry IV the decoration of the interior was entrusted to a team of artists, mostly French or Flemish, supervised by Martin Fréminet, Toussaint Dubreuil, and Ambroise Dubois. Together they formed the second Fontainebleau school.

The most important of their works to survive are the ceiling and high altar of the Chapel of the Trinité. Designed by Fréminet, the long vault, enriched with paintings set in stucco frames by Barthelemy Tremblay, lends great magnificence to the chapel.

Outside the château Henry IV created an island garden, the Jardin de l’Etang, in the lake in front of the Cour de la Fontaine, laid out as a parterre de broderie. He also built a pavilion in the middle of the lake and laid out the Parterre du Tibre south of the Cour de l’Ovale and the Cour des Offices. It was so-called because of the statue and fountain at its center.

The Palace After 1610

Louis XIII’s major work at Chateau de Fontainebleau was the addition of the magnificent horseshoe-shaped staircase in the Cour du Cheval Blanc, designed by Jean Androuet Du Cerceau. When Louis XIV came to the throne in 1643,

Fontainebleau was by far the finest of his palaces. In 1685 he created a beautiful apartment with white and gold decoration in the Pavillon de la Porte Dorée for Mme de Maintenon, and he also enlarged his own bedroom.

Louis XVI made considerable alterations to Fontainebleau, including the addition of his own Petits Appartements and the redecoration of two of the rooms of his queen-consort, Marie-Antoinette. He ordered the sumptuous meuble d’été, which is today in her bedchamber.

The Salon de Jeu, designed by Richard Mique, was in the fashionable Pompeian style. Overdoors in trompe l’oeil by Piat-Joseph Sauvage and a ceiling painted by Jean-Simon Berthélemy completed the decor.

The same team created Marie-Antoinette’s Boudoir, perhaps the most perfect piece of interior decoration in the whole palace, where stucco reliefs over the doors complement the paneled walls painted with grotesques.

In 1804 Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, made his Throne Room in Louis XIV’s bedchamber, substituting for the bed a throne designed by Charles Percier. It was in Louis XVI’s Petits Appartements, however, that Napoleon made his most important redecorations in 1808.

The rooms retained most of the original fireplaces, paneling, and architecture, into which the framework was inserted new hangings and furniture in Empire style.

Under the Third Republic, an enormous program of restoration began in 1924, largely funded by John D. Rockefeller jr, followed by a second campaign between 1964–1968, stimulated by André Malraux, which undertook, among other things, the very difficult further restoration of the Renaissance frescoes.

Fontainebleau Palace – Visitor Information

What to see:

The interior of the palace: Grands Appartements including the Papal Apartment, the sovereigns’ apartments, and the Emperor’s inner apartment

A tour of the Grands Appartements including the Throne Room (Francis I Gallery) will take 2 hours.

Audio tours are available until 15.30 in the winter and 16.30 in the summer.

Garden Tours: French garden-Grand Parterre, and the English Gardens: the Jardin de Diane and the Jardin Anglais. Audio tours are also available.

It is recommended to book your visit in advance, especially for the guided tours.

Contact and booking:
For more information please consult the official website. You can also contact the staff by phone, email, or fax:

Phone: 01 60 71 50 70
Fax: 01 60 71 50 71
Email : resa.chateau-de-fontainebleau@culture.gouv.fr

Château de Fontainebleau Location

Château de Fontainebleau Address: 77300 Fontainebleau, France. Get help with directions using the map provided below

Château de Fontainebleau Map

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Château d’Écouen is a French castle in Val d’Oise.

The château was built for Anne Montmorency, Constable of France, between 1531 and 1563, and it is the first example in France of a four-wing plan, with corner pavilions, around a central court.

Château d’Ecouen History

The Castle of Ecouen sits on a hill, with façades corresponding to the four points of the compass and the entrance wing on the east.

The steep drop of the north face of the hill is secured by a terrace, beneath which lay a ball-playing pitch that was demolished in 1793.

On all but the north side, the château is enclosed by a sizeable moat, from which the core of the building is separated by a narrow terrace. The garden shown to the northeast in a 16th-century engraving was never laid out.

The pilasters are continued on the internal façade of the north wing, which belongs to the second phase (1551–c. 1563).

This was executed by an architect working in a style directly influenced by Roman and Italian Renaissance architecture, almost certainly Jean Bullant, who is recorded at Ecouen in 1553 and probably came to the château two years earlier, when Henry III elevated the barony of Montmorency to a dukedom.

Bullant apparently completed the court façade of the north wing to match the other three but added a Classically inspired applied portico bearing a dedication to Henry II.

Of direct Roman inspiration and using giant order Corinthian columns, this portico has long been admired for the precision of its carving. On the exterior façade, untrammeled by existing work, Bullant raised a two-stage elevation of Tuscan and Doric pilasters with a central three-bay loggia.

The interiors retain painted wooden ceilings, grisaille friezes and chimneypieces, and paintings of the Fontainebleau school, in particular, 12 large oil-on-plaster overmantels depicting scenes from the Old Testament set in broad, figured, and grotesque allegorical surrounds, possibly by a Flemish painter working in the style of Nicolò dell’Abate.

Windows and furnishings from the chapel in the north-east pavilion are now at the Musée Condé, in the Chateau d’Ecouen

After 1632 Ecouen came into the possession of Henri II, 3rd Prince de Condé. Declared state property in 1793, it was a school for the Légion d’honneur until 1962, when it was placed under the management of the Monuments Historiques.

Since 1976 it has housed the Musée National de la Renaissance. (The National Museum of the Renaissance)

Musée de la Renaissance & Château d’Ecouen – Visitor Information

Museum and Castle – Opening times & tickets
It is open every day except Tuesday from 9:30 to 12:45 and 14:00 to 17:15 (winter: from 1 October) and 17:45 (in summer: from 16 April). Closed 1 January, 1 May, and 25 December.

A ticket price is 4,5 € and 4 € for groups (at least 10 persons). The entrance fee allows access to permanent collections and temporary exhibitions.

Park access:
Open every day (including Tuesday) from 8:00 to 19:00 in summer (15 April to 30 September) and from 8.00 to 18.00 in winter.
Access to the park is free. Animal access is not allowed.
Closed January 1 and December 25.

Contact details:
Email: accueil.musee-renaissance@culture.gouv.fr
Phone: +33134383850
Official website: Musee-renaissance.fr

Vsit other Famous Castle in Ile-de-France:

Palace of Versailles
Chateau de Fontainebleau
Chateau de Rambouillet
Chateau de Saint Germain en Laye
Chateau de Vaux le Vicomte
Chateau de Marly
Palais du Luxembourg

Château d’Ecouen Location

Address: Musée de la Renaissance, Château d’Ecouen, 95440 Écouen, France. Get help with directions using the map provided bellow:

Château d’Ecouen Map

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Château de Chambord is a French royal castle situated near Blois.

Château de Chambord Facts

The Château de Chambord was Francis I’s a personal project, and he had undertaken the immense construction with all the enthusiasm of the early years of his reign.

He pursued the project for 30 years, even though the court had left the Loire Valley in 1525 and he himself spent only a few brief periods at the château.

His obstinacy is explained less by his desire to build a hunting lodge for his own pleasure than by his conviction of the political importance of the arts: he wished to build an exceptional structure that would bear eternal witness to his glory and to that of his kingdom.

Chambord took on its full, political, significance when Francis took the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V to visit it, or when Henry VIII of England sought to imitate it at Nonsuch Palace in Surrey, another castle ‘sans parents.

Château de Chambord Visits

Opening times and tickets:

For more information about each day’s opening hours and tickets, you need to display the “plan your visit” calendar on the official website.

Contact details: You can also book your visit online here, or by phone at 02 54 50 40 00.

Visit the other Castles in Loire Valley:

Chateau de Chenonceau,
Chateau de Brissac,
Chateau de Blois,
Chateau d Azay le Rideau,
Chateau d Anet

Château de Chambord Location

Château de Chambord Address: Maison des Réfractaires, 41250 Chambord, France. Get help with directions using the map provided bellow

Château de Chambord Map

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Chateau de Brissac is located in the village of Brissac-Quince, just south of Angers in the Maine-Loire area, the western part of the Loire Valley.

With seven floors, it’s the tallest chateaux in the whole of France.

Château de Brissac History

In 1502, Charles II of Cosse, Duke of Brissac, built the chateau on top of the original eleventh-century, medieval fortress foundations.

Another major rebuilding began in 1606 when the duke planned a more prestigious home. In the end, he failed to complete his plans, as the medieval towers show.

The fantastic facade you see today dates back to then. You’ll notice that at the junction of the towers, it looks incomplete, wrapped like a cracked nutshell.

Inside the Chateau de Brissac, one can find room after room of exquisite antique furniture, paintings, and tapestries dating from the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries.

Many pieces also have historic significance to France’s past and the history of the family. One important historical event occurred in the sixteenth century. At that time, the Cosse-Brissacs were allied with the Catholic party of Guise, who were fighting the Protestants.

After the death of Henry III, the next in line was Henry IV of Navarre, a Protestant. Yet, in 1594, when Henry IV came to Paris to be recognized, it was a Brissac, then the Governor of Paris, who negotiated on his behalf and let him enter. (Henry IV subsequently converted to Catholicism.)

Another historic event took place inside the Chateau de Brissac when Louis XIII reconciled with his mother, Marie de Medicis. The reconciliation took place in the King’s Bedroom.

The dining room is only one of the many historic and splendid rooms open to public tours. Many rooms are hung with magnificent tapestries and have painted ceilings. The most sumptuous rooms include the King’s Bedroom, the Mortemart Room (Anne de Mortemart became the Duchess of Uzes), and the Room of the Hunt.

Memorabilia and decorations in the Room of the Hunt show the French aristocracy’s age-old devotion to the hunt. Both the Marquis and Marquise today are avid hunters and can arrange hunting for experienced riders.

The Marquis is chairman of the Angers race course and France’s representative in the world association of historical houses. He is Grandmaster of the Order of St. Lazarus, an ancient order of chivalry. The Marquise has a theology degree.

The Chateau de Brissac has many unique features. There is a private theatre, built in the nineteenth century for a duchess who loved acting and singing.

There is a private chapel. And as you tread the massive main staircase, note the steps are made of monolithic slabs of stone.

While touring these rooms with their sumptuous decorations, you’ll appreciate great style, typical of a country at the forefront of art, decoration, and fashion.

For centuries the French have raised design to high art – shown here in the luxuries that make the rooms a never-ending delight.

Château de Brissac Visitor Information

Tickets:

Adult ticket – 9 €

Students and disabled persons – 8 €
Children tickets: (age 8-16) 4,50 €, children under 8 – free admission,
Group discounted tickets (20 or more) – 7,50 € pp
Opening times:

July – August: daily from 10:00 -18:00 (guided tours only)
April – June and September-October: daily, from 10:00 to 12:15 and 14:00 to 18:00 (closed on Tuesdays)
November-March: open during school holidays
Contact details:

Please contact the Tourist Office for more information and booking:

Phone. : 33 (0)2 41 91 22 21 /Fax: 33 (0)2 41 91 25 60
E-mail :chateau-brissac@wanadoo.fr

Visit other Castles in the Loire Valey region:

Chateau de Chambord,
Chateau de Chenonceau
Chateau de Blois
Chateau d Azay le Rideau
Chateau d Anet

Château de Brissac Location

Château de Brissac Adress: Rue Louis Moron, 49320 Brissac-Quincé, France. Get help with directions:

Château de Brissac Map

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Chateau de Blois is a royal palace located in the town of Blois, Loir-et-Cher.

Château de Blois History

The Château de Blois was built in different phases between the 13th and the 17th centuries. It comprises many buildings and incorporates many architectural styles.

The chapel of St Calais (consecrated 1508), of which only the three bays of the choir remain, and the octagonal garden pavilion of Anne of Brittany also belong to Louis XII’s building campaign. The extensive gardens designed for him by the Neapolitan Pacello da Mercogliano no longer survive.

The most impressive part of the Château of Blois is the northwest wing (1515–1524), built against the medieval ramparts for Francis I.

Here the rich decoration of the ashlar-faced, three-story inner and outer elevations, with pilasters, entablatures, and other classicizing elements, is Italianate.

The irregular disposition of the parts is, however, dictated by the site and the sequence of rooms within. The main feature of the courtyard elevation is the great open polygonal staircase turret that originally occupied its center; it is monumental in conception and festive in its decoration.

Work on the château came to a halt with Francis I’s Italian campaign (1524–1525); it was not resumed until 1635, when Gaston d’Orléans, eager to establish a rival court to that of his brother, employed François Mansart to rebuild the south-west wing. In 1638 Cardinal Richelieu cut off funds for the project, which was left incomplete.

During the 18th century, the Château of Blois was neglected, and after 1788 it was used as barracks. In 1810 it was given to the town of Blois, and in 1840 it was listed as a historic monument. Extensive restoration was carried out from 1845 to 1869. It suffered damage, since repaired, from German bombardment in 1944.

Château Royal de Blois and Museum

What to see:

Château de Blois is a museum itself, with a rich history and magnificent architecture.
Sound & Light Show: A festival of special sound and lighting effects
The Fine Arts Museum
Tickets, Opening times, and Booking.

Use this contact information for more information about opening times, tickets, and booking.

Phone: 02 54 90 33 32 / Fax: 02 54 90 33 31
Official website: http://www.chateaudeblois.fr/?lang=en

Other Castles to visit in Loire Valley

Chateau d Anet
Chateau d Azay le Rideau
Chateau de Brissac
Chateau de Chambord
Chateau de Chenonceau

Château de Blois Location

Château Royal de Blois Address: 6 Place du Château, 41000 Blois, France. Get help with directions:

Château de Blois Map

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Château of Azay-le-Rideau is a French castle near Tours, Indre-et-Loire.

Château of Azay-le-Rideau History

The castle was built between 1518 and 1528 for Gilles Berthelot, a financier from Tours in the service of Francis I. The stone château, surrounded on three sides by the River Indre, has an L-shaped plan under steep slate roofs.

The Medieval Château of Azay, belonging to the Ridel family, had been destroyed by fire in 1418, although its original keep survived. The château subsequently passed to the Berthelot family, and in 1518 Gilles Berthelot put his wife, Philippe Lesbahy, assisted by the curé of St-Cyr, Guillaume Artault, in charge of supervising its reconstruction.

The chateau was confiscated in 1528 by Francis I, after Berthelot was implicated in the prosecution of Jacques, Baron de Somblançay, Minister of Finance to Francis I. This effectively put an end to the building program, leaving unfinished two of the four wings.

In 1845 the medieval keep was rebuilt as a circular tower in Renaissance style, terminating the east wing, and a corbelled circular corner turret was added at the end of the south wing over the moat, to balance the turret built in the 16th century.

Château d’Azay-le-Rideau Style

Each three-story wing consists of five bays marked out by mullioned windows, united vertically by pilasters, and ending with elaborately decorated gables above the third-story dormer windows.

These interrupt a false walkway with battlements and machicolations. The main decorative feature is the escalier d’honneur in the center of the south wing. This is signaled externally by a virtuosic four-story frontispiece with alternating pairs of superimposed round-headed and basket arches forming the entrance and the lighting to the landings.

The frontispiece is articulated with pilasters, half columns, carved relief panels, and niches for statues; it terminates in a carved gable with all’antica candelabra and other Renaissance ornaments, reaching the level of the roof ridge.

Within, the straight flights of the Italianate staircase are covered with a coffered vault decorated with profile medallions all’antica, rosettes, and other motifs.

Château d’Azay-le-Rideau Visits

Opening hours

(*Please note that the last admission is one hour before closing)

October – March: 10,00 – 12:30 / 14,00 – 17:30
April – June and September: 9:30 – 18,00
July – August: 9,30 – to 19,00
Closed: The castle is closed on the 1st of January 1, May 1, and 25 December.
Tickets:

An adult ticket cost is 8€
A discounted ticket for more than 20 persons is 6€
School group ticket: 30€ for max 35 students and 2 accompanying adults (additional adult ticket – 6€)
Children – under 18 – free entrance (family visit)
Young people (age 18-25) – free entrance if they are UE citizens or France residents
Disabled persons plus escorts – free entrance
Contact details:

Phone: +33 /(0)2 47 45 42 04
Fax: +33 / (0)2 47 45 26 61
Official website: http://azay-le-rideau.monuments-nationaux.fr/en/

Other Castles in Loire Valley to visit

Chateau de Chambord,
Chateau de Brissac,
Chateau de Blois,
Chateau de Chenonceau
Chateau d Anet

Chateau d’Azay-le-Rideau Location

Château National d’Azay le Rideau: 19 Rue Balzac, 37190 Azay-le-Rideau, France. Use this map to get directions:

Chateau d’Azay-le-Rideau Map

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Château d’Anet History

The Chateau d’Anet is aFrench 16th-century castle,75 km west of Paris, in the département of Eure-et-Loire.

In 1546 Diane de Poitiers, widow of Louis de Brézé, began to build a modest house in the village of Anet; it underwent considerable and magnificent enlargement when her lover Henry II became King of France and placed Philibert de L’Orme and virtually unlimited resources at her disposal.

The Château d’Anet is built on a moated site around three courtyards with gardens to the north. Around the middle court, the Cour du seigneurs were three residential wings and the entrance gate set in a screen wall.

To the east lay the estate farm buildings around the Basse Cour, while to the west was the Cour de la Fontaine, and beyond it the tennis court, the stables, and Diane de Poitiers’ burial chapel.

Largely demolished after the French Revolution, all that remains of this complex are the entrance gate and screen wall, a section of the west wing, the frontispiece of the north wing and parts of the cryptoporticus, the chapel in the east wing and the Basse Cour gateway.

The entrance gateway is a Doric triumphal arch of very unclassical type, derived from the west portal of the Romanesque abbey of Saint-Gilles-du-Gard in Provence.

In the tympanum above the lintel, which bears a Latin inscription alluding to Henry II and Diane de Poitiers, was a bronze relief by Benvenuto Cellini depicting the Nymph of Fontainebleau, now replaced by a plaster copy.

On top of the gateway stands a bronze group; a deer surrounded by four hunting dogs, formerly set in motion by a clockwork mechanism, alluding to Diana the huntress.

The chimneys flanking the entrance screen resemble sarcophagi, symbolizing the eternal grief of Louis de Brézé’s widow. The cypresses on either side of the gateway represent the grove where Diana hunted.

The north wing of the main courtyard, already begun before de L’Orme was engaged, was refaced, with a three-story frontispiece articulated by the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders in its center.

Château d’Anet Visitor Information

Château d’Anet is located in Anet, about 78 km far from Paris and about 16 km from Dreux.

Opening times

April – 1st of October – the castle is open every day except Tuesday, between 14,00 – 18,00

In November, and between the 1st of February – the 31 of March – the castle is open only on Saturdays and Sundays, between 14,00 and 17,00.

Contact details:

Email: anet@chateaudanet.com
Phone: 02.37.41.90.07.
Fax: 02 37 41 96 45
Official website: chateaudanet.com

Visit the other Loire Valley Castles:

Chateau de Chambord,
Chateau de Brissac,
Chateau de Blois,
Chateau d Azay le Rideau,
Chateau de Chenonceau

Château d’Anet Location

Château d’Anet Address: Place du Château, 28260 Anet, France. Get help with directions:

Château d’Anet Map

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Dinan Castle History

Château de Dinan was built by John IV of Montfort, Duke of Brittany, after his return from exile in England (1379).

The site was particularly important to him: it was from Dinan, a strongly fortified city and commercial center, that John organized resistance by the nobility to the threatened annexation of the Duchy by France.

The castle, adjoining the city but independent of it, could both provide defense and compel submission in case of revolt: it was a substantial political symbol.

The castle, attached to the city ramparts, was enlarged in 1595–1598 by the Duc de Mercoeur through the annexation of the fortified 13th-century Porte du Guichet and the artillery Tour de Coëtquen (built 1474), both of which were part of the city walls; this ensemble forms the existing castle.

The building was altered between 1693 and 1711 by the military engineer Garanjeau (in particular, the roof was suppressed and replaced by a terrace) and then by the Monuments Historiques and the city of Dinan, which are now responsible for its preservation.

The main part of John of Montfort’s castle, built by Etienne le Tur and in use by 1384, comprises a massive donjon, 34 m high. Its intricate plan is composed of two great round towers joined by a slightly projecting building, to which the principal entrance, defended by a drawbridge, opens on the ground floor.

The donjon has five stories, crowned by a parapet walk with machicolation decorated with trefoils and supported on long, elegant corbels; a sixth story, covered with slate, formerly made up the upper part of the structure.

On the opposite side to the projecting entrance block, the donjon dominated a very small courtyard, which was provided with a postern and drawbridge leading to the outside and a well that controlled a complex system of water supply.

While the exterior of the Dinan Castle has a fortified appearance, the interior is primarily residential. The floors are linked by a continuous spiral staircase.

There is a kitchen on the ground floor, and the first to fourth stories have the usual late medieval layout of hall and chamber, supplemented by garderobes and latrines, etc.

The rooms have huge fireplaces and are generously lit by large casement windows with mullions and transoms. A chapel provided with a heated stall on the second floor completes this seigneurial residence.

The donjon of Dinan is important in the history of Breton’s civil and military medieval architecture. It was the outcome of a long series of experiments carried out by ducal architects: the first ducal donjon, Pirmil (1365) at Nantes, was nothing more than a strong, gloomy cylinder; the Tour Solidor (before 1371) at Saint-Servan was the first attempt to unite round towers in order to form a donjon of a complex plan, but the living arrangements were crude.

Dinan Castle perfectly combines military considerations with efficient residential accommodation, and its skillful and subtle proportions enhance this achievement.

Château de Dinan Visitor Information

Dinan Castle is owned and managed by the municipality of Dinan.

Opening times

1st of June – 30 of September 10,00 -18,00
1st of Octobre au 31 of May de 13,30 – 17,30
The castle is closed on the 25 of December and for the whole month of January.

Tickets:

An adult ticket is 4 €, and a child ticket is. 1,55 €. There are also discounted tickets for group visits: adult tickets 2,20 € pp, and children groups (students) 1,55 € pp

Dinan Castle Location

Château de Dinan Address: Rue du Château, 22100 Dinan, France. Use this map to get directions:

Dinan Castle Map

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Château de Guédelon History

Château de Guédelon project aims to recreate a 13th-century medieval castle with technology from that era.

The castle is located in Treigny, Burgundy, France, and it is still under construction. Construction of Guedelon Castle started in 1997 and it is estimated to end around 2023.

The first year was spent making tools, baskets, pots, and stones to begin the building. Nothing happens quickly. It can take the stonecutters several days to carve one block, and this castle needs thousands.

The main reason for the Guedelon project is education. There is no better way to learn than by seeing things first hand and a group of French historians and archeologists want everyone to know how to make a medieval castle. Every step around Guedelon is like turning a page in a historical how-to book.

Amazingly, there are only 35 artisans building this castle. They are limited to using materials and techniques their counterparts used 800 years ago. All of the materials they use are found in or around the site, including sandstone, wood, iron, and limestone.

On the site, there are blacksmiths, carpenters, masons, potters, rope-makers, basket weavers, woodcutters, stonecutters, and carters with their horses.
The Guedelon Castle is Burgundy’s main tourist attraction drawing over 300,000 people each year.

Chateau de Guedelon – Visitor info

Over France’s summer months, Guedelon is open six days a week.

The castle’s website offers up-to-date information about opening hours and the current progress of the building and can be found at www.guedelon.fr.

Contact No: +33(0)386456666

Guedelon is in France’s Burgundy region near the small village of Treigny. The only way to reach it is by car. You’ll need half a day to explore the site, so do yourself a favor and stay at least one night in the area.

You don’t need to book accommodation ahead if you want to stay overnight near Guedelon. There are plenty of farm stays and inns around. Look for signs while driving in the area.

Château de Guédelon Location

Chateau de Guédelon Address: Chantier Médiéval de Guédelon D955 89520 TREIGNY

Get help with directions using the map provided bellow

Château de Guédelon Map

The post Château de Guédelon (Guédelon Castle) appeared first on Every Castle.

History of Château d’Ancy-le-Franc

The Château d’Ancy-le-Franc is a French 16th-century castle and garden near Tonnerre, in Burgundy.

Antoine de Clermont, brother-in-law of Diane de Poitiers commissioned Sebastiano Serlio, employed at the court of Francis I, to design the château and garden; construction on a large level site began in about 1546.

The house is built around a large rectangular courtyard of majestic proportions.

The twelve principal rooms on the ground floor, notably the Chambre des Nudités and the Chambre de Diane, are adorned with tapestries and frescoes.

On the first floor, the apartments and galleries were sumptuously decorated by Francesco Primaticcio.

A drawing by Jacques Du Cerceau shows that the original gardens echoed the house’s rectangular shape.

A vast rectangular raised terrace was constructed around the house and garden, and this terrace was used as a promenade from which houses and gardens could be viewed.

Visitor Information

Opening Times

Chateau d’Ancy-le-Franc is closed during the winter times, and it is open between March and November.

The chateau is open all year round for group visits by appointment.

Tickets:

An adult ticket is €9 and a child ticket cost €6. There are also different types of discounts for group visits. Visit the main page for more information or contact the tourist office:

Contact details:

Tel. (+33) 03 86 75 14 63
Email: information@chateau-ancy.com

Château d’Ancy-le-Franc Location

Château d’Ancy le Franc address: 18 Place Clermont-Tonnerre, 89160 Ancy-le-Franc, France

Get help with directions using the map provided bellow

Château d’Ancy-le-Franc Map

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