Château de La Motte-Tilly

En un regard

Le château en bref

The site of La Motte-Tilly, known as early as 1369 as a feudal motte protecting a ford on the Seine, was home to a medieval fortress owned successively by the lords of Trainel, Raguier, d'Elbeuf and then Bournonville. Having passed by marriage into the Noailles family in 1710, the estate, raised to a county by Louis XIV in 1712, saw its dilapidated old fortress razed and replaced from 1754 onwards by the present château, built to plans by François-Nicolas Lancret for the Terray brothers, including Joseph Marie Terray, Controller-General of Finances under Louis XV. Declared national property (bien national) in 1794 following the execution of the last Terray owner during the Terror, the estate was restored around 1910 by Count Charles Gérard de Rohan-Chabot, who recreated the French formal gardens that had disappeared since 1784. Bequeathed by the Marquise de Maillé to the Caisse nationale des monuments historiques together with 1,080 hectares, the château — deliberately left uninhabited and, in accordance with her wishes, open only to visitors — has been managed since 1978 by the Centre des monuments nationaux. Miloš Forman's film Valmont (1989) was shot there.