En un regard
Le château en bref
The Château de Montgobert is a country residence (château de plaisance) built between 1768 and 1775 for Antoine Pierre Desplasses, in the commune of Montgobert, on the edge of the Forest of Retz, in the Aisne department. Neoclassical in style, it has a façade with four Ionic columns supporting a segmental pediment above a rusticated base. An attic storey was added around 1798 by the architect Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine. The estate later belonged to Pauline Bonaparte, sister of Napoleon I, and her husband General Charles Leclerc, who died in Saint-Domingue in 1802; his tomb, designed by Fontaine, stands in the château's park and remained unfinished. The château then passed to Marshal Davout, and later to the Cambacérès and Suchet d'Albufera families, who still own it today. The park, transformed into an English-style landscape garden, was redesigned in the early 20th century by the firm of the landscape architect Achille Duchêne. The façades and roofs of the château, the staircase with its wrought-iron balustrade, the ground-floor dining room and the tomb of General Leclerc were listed and classified as historic monuments by decree of 29 December 1978. Since 1974, the château has housed the European Museum of Wood and Tools (musée européen du Bois et de l'Outil), which displays a collection of more than 3,000 old tools.
