Château de Castille

En un regard

Le château en bref

The Château de Castille, in Argilliers (Gard), near the Pont du Gard, owes its fame to the extravagant ‘folies du baron de Castille’. Between 1785 and 1824, Gabriel-Joseph de Froment, Baron de Castille, who had been shaped by his travels in Italy, England and the Netherlands, remodelled the château (corner towers, Tuscan colonnades, balustrades) and laid out a fan-shaped garden with seven avenues, punctuated by remarkable garden follies: a circular colonnade known as the ‘Olive Tree of Peace’ (1806), kiosks, monopteral temples, a pagoda in the form of a tholos inspired by the Tour Fenestrelle in Uzès, the Chapelle Saint-Louis (1814) and a pyramid cenotaph (1824), notably in memory of his son Édouard, killed at the Battle of Essling (1809). Bought back in 1924 by Paul Grousset, the estate was exploited as a stone quarry: several follies were sold off and dispersed as far as the United States, and the château was declassified as a historic monument in 1935. Acquired around 1950 by the art historian Douglas Cooper, it received a visit from Pablo Picasso, who in 1962 made a wall drawing in the loggia during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Restored over forty years by Nicolas and Hélène de Bikhovetz, owners from 1977, the estate, whose façades, roofs, colonnades, the gallery decorated by Picasso and the surviving follies have been listed as historic monuments since 2017–2018, was put back on the market in 2016.