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Château de Bénouville

France · 18th century

Founded
1770
Architect
Claude Nicolas Ledoux
Heritage status
classified historical monument
Location
Bénouville
Coordinates
49.23611°, -0.28111°
Links
Wikimedia Commons
Open on the map →Wikipedia ↗
Château de Bénouville in France
Photo: Pascal RADIGUE · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Description

The Château de Bénouville (French pronunciation: [ʃato də benuvil]) is a building in Bénouville, Normandy, near Caen (northern France). It was designed in 1769 by architect Claude Nicolas Ledoux and built in 1770-74 and 1776-80 at the request of Hyppolite-François Sanguin, marquis of Livry (1715–1789) and his marquise Thérèse Bonne Gillain de Bénouville, heiress of the property. The interior was under construction from 1778 to 1780 under the direction of Jean-François-Étienne Gilet, the architect of Caen. In 1792, it was purchased from the widowed marquise by a fermier général (tax collector) who was guillotined in 1794.

His daughter inherited the property which remained in that family until 1927. It then became the property of the general council of Calvados which turned it into a maternity hospital (singer Gérard Lenorman was born there). In 1980, it was rehabilitated and restored, opening its doors to the public in 1990.

This château is one of the best preserved works of Ledoux, making it a major monument of neoclassical architecture at the end of the eighteenth century. Its monumental staircase and its exterior architecture were very modern for the time.

Text adapted from “Château de Bénouville” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

In the rankings

Château de Bénouville ranks #5,788 of 9,902 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #501 of the 954 mapped in France. Founded 1770, it is older than 15% of the atlas's dated landmarks, one of 757 atlas entries founded in the 18th century. Its Wikipedia articles were opened 1,204 times in the last 60 days, more than 61% of the atlas. 3 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. It is one of the 43 landmarks on the atlas's regional map of Normandy. See how France compares in the castle statistics.

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