Château de Villette : the splendor of French decor

Château de Villette

Situated in a lush woodland near Paris, Château de Villette has stood virtually unchanged since it was built in the late seventeenth century according to plans by Jules Hardouin-Mansart, chief architect to Louis XIV. Among the many owners the estate has known from the thirteenth century to the present day, those who made the chateau their home in the eighteenth century, at the height of the Enlightenment, have left the most enduring and significant mark on it. Here the Marquis de Condorcet and his wife Sophie de Grouchy, both distinguished intellects, gathered around them some of the most brilliant figures of their time, including the Marquis de La Fayette, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson. Listed as a historic monument in 1942, Château de Villette now hosts receptions and symposiums, and serves as a location for films and television series. The superb château and its gardens reveal a legacy now painstakingly conserved and restored - guided by meticulous archival research - by the present owners with the renowned interior decorator Jacques Garcia.

Taking Sophie de Grouchy as his muse, the historian Guillaume Picon recounts the intellectual and cultural life of this historic estate over nearly eight centuries, illustrated by a wealth of sumptuous and specially commissioned photographs by Bruno Ehrs.