Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte

En un regard

Le château en bref

The Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte, located in the French commune of Maincy (Seine-et-Marne), 50 km south-east of Paris, near Melun, is a 17th-century château (1658–1661) built for Louis XIV's Superintendent of Finances, Nicolas Fouquet. It now belongs to a cadet branch of the Marquis de Vogüé family. Fouquet called on the finest artists of the day to build the château: the architect Louis Le Vau, First Architect to the King (1656), the painter Charles Le Brun, founder of the Académie de peinture (1648), the landscape designer André Le Nôtre, Controller General of the King's Buildings (1657), and the master mason Michel Villedo. Their talents had already been brought together by the young Louis XIV to build wings at the Château de Vincennes in 1651–1653. The King later called on them again to build the Palace of Versailles, with Vaux-le-Vicomte serving as the model. The château, a masterpiece of mid-17th-century classical architecture, is today the largest privately owned property in France listed as a historic monument, since its purchase in July 1875 by Alfred Sommier, who acted as a patron of the arts, a role continued by his descendants. It currently has an annual budget of €8 million, employs 75 full-time staff and each year offers more than 300,000 visitors an experience of the French Grand Siècle.