General view of the château
The Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte is a Classical French chateau located in
Maincy, near Melun, 55 km southeast of Paris in the Seine-et-Marne département of France. It was built from 1658 to 1661 for
Nicolas Fouquet, Marquis de Belle-Isle (Belle-Ile-en-Mer), Viscount of Melun and Vaux,
the superintendent of finances of Louis XIV.
History
Once a small château located between the royal residences of Vincennes and
Château de Fontainebleau, the estate of Vaux-le-Vicomte was purchased by
Nicolas Fouquet in 1641. at that time he was an ambitious twenty-six year-old member of the Parlement of Paris,
Fifteen years later, Fouquet was King Louis XIV's superintendent of finances (finance minister) and construction began on what was then the
finest château and garden in France. This achievement was brought about through the collaboration of the three men of genius whom
Fouquet had chosen for the task: the architect Louis Le Vau, the painter-decorator
Charles Le Brun and the landscape architect André Le
Nôtre.
The château and its patron became for a short time a great center of fine feasts, literature and arts. The poet
La Fontaine and the playwright Molière were among
the artists close to Fouquet. In the inauguration of Fouquet's Vaux-le-Vicomte, a Molière play was performed, along with a dinner
event, organized by François Vatel, and showing an impressive firework show.
The château was lavish, refined, and dazzling to behold, but rich in hidden drama. Indeed, the King had Fouquet arrested
shortly after a famous fête that took place on August 17, 1661, with Molière's play 'Les Fâcheux'. The celebration had been too impressive and the superintendent's home too
luxurious, and Jean-Baptiste Colbert had pushed the king to believe that his
minister's magnificence was funded by the misappropriation of public funds. Fouquet was arrested by Colbert, who would replace
him as superintendent of finances. Later Voltaire was to sum up the famous fête thus:
"On 17 August, at six in the evening Fouquet was the King of France: at two in the morning he was nobody." La Fontaine wrote describing the fête, and shortly afterwards penned his Elégie aux
nymphes de Vaux.
After Nicolas Fouquet was arrested and imprisoned for life, and his wife exiled, Vaux-le-Vicomte was placed under
sequestration. The King seized, confiscated, and occasionally purchased, 120 tapestries, the statues, and all the orange trees.
He then sent the team of artists (Le Vau, Le Nôtre and Le Brun) to design what would be a much larger project than
Vaux-le-vicomte: Versailles, which would be changed sequentially by the greatest
architects, like Jules Hardouin Mansart and Ange-Jacques Gabriel, increasing its size, until the French
Revolution.
Madame Fouquet recovered her property ten years later and retired there with her eldest son. After her husband's death in
1680, her son died too. In 1705 she decided to put Vaux-le-Vicomte up for sale.
The Maréchal de Villars became the new owner although he had never
even set eyes on the place. In 1764 the Maréchal's son sold the estate to the Duke of Praslin,
whose descendants were to maintain the property for over a century. The château was the scene of a vicious murder in the 1840s,
when the current duc de Choiseul-Praslin killed his wife in her bedroom there. After a thirty-year period of neglect, it was put
up for sale.
In 1875, Alfred Sommier acquired Vaux-le-Vicomte at a public auction. The château was empty,
some of the outbuildings had fallen into ruin, and the famous gardens were totally overgrown. The huge task of restoration and
refurbishment began under the direction of the renowned architect Gabriel-Hippolyte Destailleur. When Sommier died in 1908, the château and the gardens had
recovered their original appearance. His son, Edme Sommier, and his daughter-in-law completed the
task. Today, his descendants continue to work on the preservation of Vaux-le-Vicomte. The château remains a private property—
owned by the comte de Vogüé— but, named by the state a monument historique,
it welcomes visitors.
Features
Rhythmic massing of the entrance front.
Vaux-le-Vicomte was in many ways the most influential work built in Europe in the mid-17th century, the finest house in France
built after the Château de Maisons. Here, together with the architect Louis Le Vau,
the landscape architect André le Nôtre, and the painter-decorator Charles Le Brun
worked together on a large-scale project for the first time. Their collaboration marked the beginning of a new order: the
magnificent manner that is associated with the "Louis XIV style" involving a system of collective work, which could be applied to
the structure, its interiors and works of art and the creation of an entire landscape.
Vaux-le-Vicomte is one of Europe's finest construction of its kind.
Like many châteaux in the north of France, Vaux is surrounded on three sides by a rectangular moat, with the axial arrival
avenue continued across a bridge to the open forecourt. The structure is symmetrical and tightly integrated, with a slightly
projecting central block and end pavillions, with two returned wings that project forward. Traditional tall slate roofs emphasize
each structural element with a pyramidal cap.
At the rear, the structure is dominated by the projection of its central oval salon which rises the full height of the house,
under an oval dome.
17th-century engraving of the
parterres as first laid out
The château rises on an elevated platform in the middle of the woods and marks the border between unequal spaces, treated in a
different way. This effect is more distinctive today, with matured woodlands, than it was in the seventeenth century; the site
had been farmland, and the plantations were new.
Le Nôtre's garden was the dominant structure of the great complex, with a balanced composition
of water basins and canals contained in stone curbs, fountains, gravel walks, and patterned parterres that remains more coherent than the vast display Le Nôtre was to create at Versailles.
The site, unlike Versailles, was naturally well-watered, with two small rivers that met in the park; the canalized bed of one
forms the Grand Canal.
Popular Culture
- Vaux le Vicomte was used for location filming for the 1979 James Bond movie
Moonraker. It served as Hugo Drax's residence in California.
July 7, 2007. Eva Longoria (The 'Desperate Housewives' actress) and Tony Parker (basketball star) were married in the Parisian
Eglise Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois church, located near the famous Louvre Museum. It is this same church that once served the
French royal families. After the religious ceremony, the newly weds and their guests were chartered by several red buses to
travel the 20 miles to the Chateau Vaux-le-Vicomte. (Located in Maincy, France just south of Paris) Eva and Tony booked the 17
century castle for two days. (one hour to rent the Chateau is about $45,000.) The guests enjoyed dinner then partied the night
away. Notably, OK magazine paid $2 million for the exclusive pictures.
September 3. 2006. Catherine Wall and Darren Aschaffenburg of New Orleans, Louisiana were married in the garden of Bassin de
la Couronne (The Fountain of the Crown) part of the astonishing gardens of the famous Château de Vaux le Vicomte. After the
ceremony over 2000 candles then illuminated the entire gardens. The 200 guests enjoyed a most extravagant dinner inside the
Château’s Grand Salon. The Grand Salon is long considered one of the most stunning and dramatic rooms of the majestic Château.
The band Les Cigales performed through out the night and the evening was concluded with a magnificent firework display over the
gardens. The wedding was attended by both the Comte and Comtess de Vogüé, the family to which the Château belongs
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