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The Château du Verduron also known as the Château des Sphinx owes its original fame to Louis Blouin, who held the prominent position of head valet in the court of Louis XIV of France from 1704 until 1715. Other distinguished owners of the property included Victorien Sardou, the French dramatist and one-time mayor of the Parisian suburb of Marly-le-Roi. The Château du Verduron is located on Place Victorien Sardou in Marly-le-Roi, a commune in the department of Yvelines. Initially a simple one-story structure, it passed through a succession of owners following its original construction. In the early 2000s, it was purchased by SCI Le Verduron. This company commissioned COGEMAD to completely restore the building under the direction of Emad Khashoggi, who also managed the Château Louis XIV project in Louveciennes and the restoration of the Palais Rose in Vésinet. == History == The history of this property is rich and complex. In the Middle Ages, the current site of the Château du Verduron was occupied by the . The property passed through a succession of owners. Legend has obscured details of the site’s history, in part due to some confusion between Jérôme Blouin and his brother Louis, the head valet of King Louis XIV. Some scholars believe that Louis XIV gave a portion of the former seigneurial domain to Louis Blouin, his head valet and the governor of Versailles and Marly, the two major royal castles of the period.〔''Louveciennes et Marly'', ''Victorien Sardou'', 1986, p. 59.〕 Others think that Louis Blouin acquired this property from Léon Bierry, the king’s close advisor, who also held the important financial office of contrôleur général des rentes in the Hôtel de Ville.〔''Marly-le-Roi et son histoire (697-1904)'', ''Camille Piton'', 1904, p. 303.〕 The GRAHAL study of 2002, which was based on notarized documents found in the National Archives and the Departmental Archives of Versailles, refer to Blouin as the owner of the property only after 1726, later than Louis XIV’s death Prior to that date, the property was occupied by the daughter of Léon Bierry and her husband, named Fresson, who was an attorney serving in the parliament of Versailles. The couple apparently made substantial additions to the existing property. In 1722, Fresson’s heirs sold the domain to César-Pierre Landais de Soisel, Louis XIV’s councilor and secretary. He in turn provided a lifetime lease on the property to Blouin in 1726. Blouin left a strong mark on this monument’s history, whatever the precise details of his occupancy there. Described as “the king’s favorite” and “the little patron,” Blouin was considered to be a man of taste and culture. He loved to surround himself with “everything of distinction in the world of arts and letters.” A visitor to the property in Marly would have encountered prominent figures of the era, including Coysevox, Racine, Boileau, Girardon, and Mignard. After Blouin died in 1729, the Comtesse de Feuquières, the daughter of the painter Mignard and Blouin’s mistress, occupied the property until her own death in 1742.〔Here again, opinions diverge. It is important to make a distinction between owners and tenants, and we can no doubt find common ground between the GRAHAL study and C. Piton’s work. We refer to the latter interpretation here rather than the history of “ownership” in the legal sense of the term.〕 The Comtesse de Vassé purchased the property in 1751 and lived there until she died in June 1768. In 1769, the Comte de Jaucourt, the heir of the Comtesse de Vassé, sold the château to Augustin-Louis-Marie Rouillé, the chevalier and seigneur of Vaugien. That same year, Rouillé sold the usufruct of the property to Madame de Saint-Martin, whose husband obtained the right to exploit the ice ponds in the surrounding park. Subsequently, in 1781, Rouillé, ruined financially, also sold the bare ownership of the property to the Villemoriens. In 1784, they obtained full ownership by purchasing the rights of usufruct from the heir of the widowed Madame de Saint-Martin. Monsieur de Villemorien, the Farmer General, and his wife, herself the daughter of a Farmer General, owned land separated from the Château du Verduron by a road through the Forest of Marly, a royal domain. They received permission to build a covered bridge over the road and thus enlarge their property. The residence was famed for the hostess’s opulent festivities and the distinguished guests who attended them, including Saint-Aubin, who immortalized these gala celebrations in his engraving Le Bal paré. Madame de Villemorien, who had been widowed and subsequently remarried, sold the Château du Verduron to Charles-Michel Trudaine de la Sablière in 1792. He was arrested during the French Revolution and perished on the scaffold shortly thereafter. Sixteen heirs contested the estate, particularly the property in Marly. Ultimately, Citizen Augustin d’Herblez and his wife prevailed by purchasing the shares of the other heirs. The Château changed hands again in 1797, bought by Marie-Joseph Bourgouin. The unoccupied residence was imperiled until its purchase by the Parisian banker Pierre-Antoine Ravel in June 1802. An anecdote from this period tells of the hunting expedition of Napoleon Bonaparte, then the First Consul, who had the gates of the abandoned park opened so that his company could ride through the chateau’s salon in pursuit of a stag. Ravel’s heir sold the property one last time in 1838 to Anne-Elie-Marie de Montmorency-Luxembourg, a distant descendent of the . She occupied the properties of her ancestors under the Restoration, but only very briefly. Fearing death on the scaffold, she was bullied out of her ownership rights by her politically liberal neighbors, who were closely allied to Marly’s mayor. Upon her death, the property was retroceded by her heir to his relatives, Madame and Monsieur Béthune-Sully. They used the château as a private hospital for Madame Béthune-Sully, who suffered from dementia. In 1863, “a wanderer, mounted on a donkey that bore him through the woods at will, suddenly had his steed halt at the edge of a broad hollow covered with an abundance of tasty thistles. Our wanderer, enchanted by the spot’s cool air and solitude, urged his mount through the lofty trees that edged the far side of the ditch, eager to discover what their dense foliage would reveal.” This “wanderer” was none other than the dramatist Victorien Sardou. He was captivated by the place. Ardently longing to own it, he achieved his goal in August 1863. He altered the appearance of the property, filling it with his collections and the gifts bestowed on him by admirers. A celebrated playwright, he surrounded himself with a circle of performers and artists who flattered him and enthusiastically attended the lavish receptions he hosted in his residence in Marly. Victorien Sardou also became involved in the daily life of the commune of Marly, but he met his match when he attempted to organize a genuine “counter-revolution.” Despite this setback, he kept his beloved Château des Sphinx. When he died in 1908, the usufruct of the property was granted to his wife, while the bare ownership went to his four children. They recovered the right of usufruct when their mother died and sold the property to Bertrand-Louis-Eugène Mir. When Mir died in 1930, his nieces inherited. At the conclusion of the division of the estate, only the Marquise de Gonet received ownership of the property. In 1940, the marquise divided the property into two lots, which she gave to her two daughters. One of the parcels was designated the “Château des Sphinx” and the other the “Orangerie.” In 1970, the Château des Sphinx was sold to the insurance company AXA, which undertook the building’s restoration in the 1970s. Other companies subsequently owned the residence until it was purchased by its current owner, SCI Le Verduron. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Château du Verduron」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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