The Gardens of the Ferté-Vidame Château A Witness to Past Glories

AN EXCEPTIONAL ARCHTECTURAL TRADITION.

The most impressive 18th century monumental ruins.

“What on earth happened here?” wondered Jean de Varende. The ruin is frightening, nameless, wonderful. Visitors not warned in advance let out a cry. It’s terrible and grandiose, from its endless balustrades to the edges of the beautiful lakes, this corpse of fortune and power”.

150 metres of walls, not counting all the corners and contours, over a hundred rooms, an oval salon worthy of the greatest palaces, paintings by great masters (Hubert Robert, Joseph Vernet, Greuse), such was the château of Jean-Joseph de Laborde. Today, all that is left is the great ruins which would doubtless have inspired great romantic writers. Nowhere else in the Perche will you find a site that symbolises both the grandeur and the decadence of a period of history in which France was undergoing its greatest changes – The French Revolution. The symbol of an era long gone, the Ferté- Vidame château remains a silent witness to the events of history. The shadows of its illustrious owners, from the clergy of Chartres to the grandson of the de Bourbon Penthièvre, otherwise known as Louis-Philippe, floats above the last formal gardens that the area had known. A visitor to this site, an unlikely guest of the Marquis de Laborde, cannot fail to be impressed by the impressive views available.

A UNIQUE NATURAL TRADITION.

Beetles, butterflies and dragonflies.

Nature in its abundance is one of the most important features of the Perche area . When you take a walk through the gardens of the Ferté-Vidame château, you become a keen entomologist. The site, whose glory days matched those of French history, is also amongst the best unspoiled natural areas of the Perche and the Eure-et-Loir department. Accordingly, an insect-discovery trail has been created. This educational route offers children and adults alike the opportunity to investigate the fascinating world of insects. A free book of activities is available in the tourist office nearby and will guide you through an absorbing and instructional trail. At the edge of the Gautray lake, you will amazed to discover the different indigenous creatures such as the red-spotted locust and the stag beetles that haunt Jean-Joseph de Laborde’s gardens. Could it be that these six-legged bugs are the new and of the Ferté-Vidame château?

THE CHATEAU DURING THE TIME OF JEAN-JOSEPH DE LABORDE.

150 metres of wall, not counting the corners and contours.

The majestic ruins you see when you wander along the shady paths of the gardens are without doubt the most imposing and picturesque from the 18th century in France. All that is left now are the walls, pierced by the huge palace windows that Jean-Joseph de Laborde, the fantastically wealthy banker and financer from the time of Louis 15th and Louis 16th, had built. In 1764, having acquired the last of the buildings belonging to the court diarist Saint-Simon, he demolished the mediaeval château and then rebuilt a huge palace with a 150 metre-wide façade, upon the original foundations. French-style formal gardens were created and he enjoyed views of around 3 kilometres to the east and west.

The estate covered 860 hectares and was enclosed by 13 kilometres of walls. Today, it remains the second-largest estate in the Centre-Val-de-Loire region, after the estate of Chambord.

In 1784, shortly before the French Revolution, Jean-Joseph de Laborde was forced to cut his links with la Ferté-Vidame, when he was directed by Louis 16th to sell the château and the entire estate to the Duke de Bourbon Penthièvre. Why did he do this? The Duke de Bourbon Penthièvre, who was the grandson of Louis 14th and the de Montespan, was, as was his father before him, the Master of the Royal Hunt. As such, he organised hunts for Louis 16th and regularly invited him to hunt at Rambouillet. Louis 16th took a liking to the Rambouillet estate and bought it from his cousin. Penthièvre, feeling the loss of his estate, acquired la Ferté-Vidame at the direction of Louis 16th.

Unfortunately for him, the Duke de Bourbon Penthièvre had no time to enjoy his property at la Ferté-Vidame before the French Revolution exploded. All estates belonging to the were seized and sold as national properties. La Ferté-Vidame, its château, its gardens and all of the estate were sold to a rather unscrupulous property developer, Cardot Villiers, who from 1793, set about a methodical pillage of the estate and château.

THE ESTATE DURING THE TIME OF THE ORLEANS FAMILY.

Royal Ownership.

The estate did eventually return to the ownership of descendants of the Duke de Bourbon Penthièvre, but not until the period of the Restoration.

His daughter, the Duchesse Louise Adélaïde d’Orléans (the divorced wife of Philippe d’Orléans, a.k.a ‘Philippe Egalité’) returned to France after a long tour of Europe during which she avoided the terror of the French Revolution. Now the sole heir of her father’s fortune, she recovered some of the lands that had been seized, including La Ferté-Vidame. She did very little to maintain the architectural gem and just continued the gradual dismantling of the château that Cardot Villiers had started. Using materials recovered from La Ferté-Vidame, she built the initial stages of the current Chapelle Royale at Dreux, a project that would be completed several years later by her son Louis-Philippe and which, still today, serves as the mausoleum for the Orléans family. On the death of the Duchess, Louis-Philippe, King of France, took an interest in the property at La Ferté-Vidame. He planned to reconstruct the château but due to a shortage of funds, concentrated instead on the associated outbuildings, alongside the Church of Saint-Nicolas where Saint-Simon lived when at La Ferté-Vidame.

The south façade of these buildings has been preserved in its original style and is classified as an historic building. It can be viewed when walking within the gardens. Louis-Philippe developed this area which became known as ‘The Little Château’, by adding two further wings, one of which looked on to the Place Saint-Simon (the square opposite the baroque church of Saint- Nicolas) and the other which looked on to the rue du Temple.

AMONGST THE GREATEST PRIVATE HUNTS IN FRANCE.

An estate driven by hunting.

In 1872, the estate was acquired by a new owner, the Léon de Dordolot. A hunting devotee, he created a team of hunting dogs specialising in wild boar and built kennels for the hounds situated at the hunters’ farm within the estate.

Léon de Dordolot occupied his estate at La Ferté-Vidame for 9 years before selling it to Charles Laurent, who in 1880, moved in to ‘The Little Château’. With much of his time taken up by his professional commitments, it was his wife Marie who took on the management of the estate. They completed the building of the Pavillon Saint-Dominique, which now houses the tourist office. Their son Roger, Councillor and Mayor of La Ferté-Vidame, was also an aficionado of hunting with the famous team from Chambray. He inherited following the death of the Marquis in 1910 and formed the Roger Laurent hunt at La Ferté-Vidame, specialising in stag hunts. Between hunting with hounds with the team from Chambray and the Roger Laurent hunt, more than 2,500 stags were killed over an area covering more than 100,000 hectares of woodlands in the Perche and Normandy areas. In this way, La Ferté-Vidame became one of the most famous hunts in France during the 19th and 20th centuries.

La Ferté-Vidame Tourist Office

Traduction par Philip Smith [email protected]