Chateau De Chantilly - France

castle in Chantilly.

The estate began in 1484 when Chantilly came into the possession of the Montmorency family. The first mansion (no longer extant, now replaced by the Grand Château) was built in 1528-31 for the Constable Anne de Montmorency, by Pierre Chambiges. The Petit Château was also built for him, around 1560, and probably by Jean Bullant. In 1632, after the execution of Henri II, it passed to the Grand Condé who inherited it through his mother, a Montmorency.

Several interesting pieces of history are associated with the Château during the 1600s. Molière's famous play, Les Précieuses ridicules, there received its first performance in 1659. Madame de Sévigné relates in her memoirs that when Louis XIV visited in 1671, his maître d'hôtel committed suicide when he feared the fish would be served late.

The original mansion was ruined in the French Revolution. It was repaired in a modest way by the last Condé, but then entirely rebuilt in 1875-81 by Henri d'Orléans, duc d'Aumale (1822-97) to the designs of Honore Daumet. (The new chateau has met with mixed reviews. Boniface de Castellane summed up one line of thought: "What is today styled a marvel is one of the saddest specimens of the architecture of our era - one enters at the second stage and descends to the salons".) In the intervening years, the entire property had been confiscated from the Orléans family between the years 1853-1872, during which interval it was owned by Coutts, the English bank. In the end, the Duc d'Aumale bequeathed the property to the Institut de France upon his death in 1897.

During the First World War, Chantilly marks the farthest advance of the German troops in the region. Subsequently served as headquarters for Marshall Joffre, and a number of conferences between the Allies were held there.

and there u have it :)