Château de Champs-sur-Marne
Encyclopedia
Champs-sur-Marne
Champs-sur-Marne is a commune in the eastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located in the Seine-et-Marne Departments of France in the Île-de-France region from the center of Paris....
was built in its present form for the treasurer Charles Renouard de la Touane in 1699 by Pierre Bullet, architecte du roi. After the first proprietor's bankruptcy, another financier, Paul Poisson de Bourvalais, took up the project. Jean-Baptiste Bullet de Chamblain, the son of Pierre Bullet, finished Champs in 1706.
Ten years later, Paul Poisson was in the Bastille
Bastille
The Bastille was a fortress in Paris, known formally as the Bastille Saint-Antoine. It played an important role in the internal conflicts of France and for most of its history was used as a state prison by the kings of France. The Bastille was built in response to the English threat to the city of...
on charges of embezzlement and the château was seized by the Crown. In 1718, it was sold to the princesse de Conti
Marie Anne de Bourbon
Marie Anne de Bourbon, Légitimée de France was the eldest legitimised daughter of King Louis XIV of France and Louise de La Vallière. At the age of thirteen, she was married to Louis Armand de Bourbon, Prince of Conti and as such was the Princess of Conti by marriage...
, natural daughter of King Louis XIV of France
Louis XIV of France
Louis XIV , known as Louis the Great or the Sun King , was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre. His reign, from 1643 to his death in 1715, began at the age of four and lasted seventy-two years, three months, and eighteen days...
and his first official mistress, Louise de La Vallière
Louise de La Vallière
Louise de La Vallière was a mistress of Louis XIV of France from 1661 to 1667. She later became the Duchess of La Vallière and Duchess of Vaujours in her own right...
. That same year, however, the princess cancelled a debt by deeding Champs to her first cousin, the duc de la Vallière. When the duke died in 1739, he left the château to his son and heir, the famous bibliophile, Louis César de La Baume Le Blanc
Louis César de La Baume Le Blanc
Louis César de La Baume Le Blanc, duc de Vaujours, duc de La Vallière was a French nobleman, bibliophile and military man...
. The new duc de La Vallière was later to become a trusted friend of King Louis XV and his mistress, Madame de Pompadour
Madame de Pompadour
Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour, also known as Madame de Pompadour was a member of the French court, and was the official chief mistress of Louis XV from 1745 to her death.-Biography:...
.
Around 1750, the duke added a beautiful rococo
Rococo
Rococo , also referred to as "Late Baroque", is an 18th-century style which developed as Baroque artists gave up their symmetry and became increasingly ornate, florid, and playful...
salon chinois (Chinese salon) to the château with wall paintings by noted artist Christophe Huet
Jean-Baptiste Huet
Jean-Baptiste Marie Huet was a French painter, engraver and designer associated with pastoral and genre scenes of animals in the Rococo manner, influenced by François Boucher....
. At the château, Louis César entertained many of the famous writers of the day, including Diderot
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer. He was a prominent person during the Enlightenment and is best known for serving as co-founder and chief editor of and contributor to the Encyclopédie....
, Voltaire
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state...
, d'Alembert
Jean le Rond d'Alembert
Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert was a French mathematician, mechanician, physicist, philosopher, and music theorist. He was also co-editor with Denis Diderot of the Encyclopédie...
and François-Augustin de Paradis de Moncrif
François-Augustin de Paradis de Moncrif
François-Augustin de Paradis de Moncrif was a French writer and poet, of a family originally of Scots origin. He was appointed royal historiographer to Louis XV of France. His parody of owlishly pedantic scholarship, Histoire des chats, and the protection of the house of Orléans gained him entry...
, with whom he also corresponded regularly.
After the construction of a magnificent new château at Montrouge
Montrouge
Montrouge is a commune in the southern Parisian suburbs, located from the center of Paris, France. It is one of the most densely populated municipalities in Europe...
around 1750, however, the duke gradually abandoned the Château de Champs-sur-Marne. Eventually, he tried to sell the domain, but he could not find a buyer and was forced to rent it out. Between July 1757 and January 1759, he leased the estate to Madame de Pompadour
Madame de Pompadour
Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour, also known as Madame de Pompadour was a member of the French court, and was the official chief mistress of Louis XV from 1745 to her death.-Biography:...
for 12,000 livres per year. The marquise spent 200,000 livres in less than eighteen months to renovate the château. In November 1757, she received the prince de Soubise there after his defeat at the Battle of Rossbach
Battle of Rossbach
The Battle of Rossbach took place during the Seven Years' War near the village of Roßbach, in the Electorate of Saxony. Frederick the Great defeated the allied armies of France and the Holy Roman/Austrian Empire...
. As the king did not like the château, the marquise left it at the beginning of 1759. In 1763, the duke finally sold Champs to Gabriel Michel de Tharon (1702-1765), a rich shipowner.
In 1820, Armand Santerre, nephew of the Revolutionary General Antoine Joseph Santerre
Antoine Joseph Santerre
Antoine Joseph Santerre was a businessman and general during the French Revolution.-Early life:The Santerre family moved from St. Michel- en Thierrache to Paris in 1747 where they purchased a brewery known as the Brasserie de la Magdeleine...
, bought the parc Saint Martin surrounding the château. In 1855, his brother Ernest Santerre bought the château as well. Later, in 1895, it was finally sold to comte Louis Cahen d'Anvers, who thoroughly restored it, installing boiseries designed by Germain Boffrand
Germain Boffrand
Germain Boffrand was one of the most gifted French architects of his generation. A pupil of Jules Hardouin-Mansart, Germain Boffrand was one of the main creators of the precursor to Rococo called the style Régence, and in his interiors, of the Rococo itself...
that had been removed from the Hôtel de Mayenne, Paris, and recreated its parterre
Parterre
A parterre is a formal garden construction on a level surface consisting of planting beds, edged in stone or tightly clipped hedging, and gravel paths arranged to form a pleasing, usually symmetrical pattern. Parterres need not have any flowers at all...
gardens in the hands of Achille Duchêne
Achille Duchêne
Achille Duchêne was a French garden designer who worked in the grand manner established by André Le Nôtre. The son of the landscaper...
. Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
was among the guests in this era at Champs. Louis Cahen d'Anvers' son Charles made a gift of it to the state in 1935.
The residence was modernised in 1959 to ready it for visiting heads of state of the French Union
French Union
The French Union was a political entity created by the French Fourth Republic to replace the old French colonial system, the "French Empire" and to abolish its "indigenous" status.-History:...
. In 1974 it was opened to the public and ceased its official capacity. It has served as a location for many films since then, while the Monuments Historiques
Monument historique
A monument historique is a National Heritage Site of France. It also refers to a state procedure in France by which national heritage protection is extended to a building or a specific part of a building, a collection of buildings, or gardens, bridges, and other structures, because of their...
employ some outbuildings as research facilities.
The château looks onto a grand parterre
Parterre
A parterre is a formal garden construction on a level surface consisting of planting beds, edged in stone or tightly clipped hedging, and gravel paths arranged to form a pleasing, usually symmetrical pattern. Parterres need not have any flowers at all...
with two basins and an extended central axis that sweeps down all the way to the Marne
Marne
Marne is a department in north-eastern France named after the river Marne which flows through the department. The prefecture of Marne is Châlons-en-Champagne...
, laid out about 1710 by Claude Desgotz
Claude Desgotz
Claude Desgotz was the nephew and protegé of André Le Nôtre, the designer of the French formal gardens at Vaux-le-Vicomte and Versailles that set the pattern for grand gardening in France up to the Revolution, in spite of increasing competition from the informal English landscape style...
, the nephew and pupil of André Le Nôtre
André Le Nôtre
André Le Nôtre was a French landscape architect and the principal gardener of King Louis XIV of France...
; it is surrounded by a landscape park laid out in the nineteenth century in the English fashion.
Hurricane Lothar, the storm of 26 December 1999, did a great deal of damage to mature woodland in the park.