Château de Choisy

The Château de Choisy was a royal French residence in the commune of Choisy-le-Roi in the Val-de-Marne department, not far from Paris. The commune was given its present name by Louis XV, when he purchased the manor of Choisy and its château in October 1739.

The site had been purchased well before 1680 by Louis XIV's first cousin Anne Marie Louise d'Orléans, Duchess of Montpensier, "La Grande Mademoiselle". She laid out 40,000 livres for the property, and swept away an existing corps de logis, according to her Mémoires, and had a new house built to plans of Jacques Gabriel—"who made my house to my fashion" Mlle Montpensier noted, "without any ornament or 'architecture'" an assertion that overlooked sculptural enrichments in the pediment, by Étienne Le Hongre.

The Château de Choisy was set in an elaborate series of gardens laid out by André Le Nôtre. He was called in before the few existing buildings were swept away and found the site too closed in by dense woodlands: "There one only saw the riverbank as if through a dormer window," he told the king—who passed on the remark— and advised Mlle de Montpensier to begin in this "vilaine situation" by "laying low all the woods that were there". The view of the river was the main thing, and Mlle de Montpensier calculated it to advantage: "As I had my house built in order to go there in summer, I took measures in order that one might see the river in the time of year when it is at its lowest; from my bed I see it and all the boats that pass."

The lost château is known today through engravings by Pierre-Jean Mariette, Gabriel Perelle and Pierre Aveline. Its interiors were well described in the Grande Mademoiselle's Mémoires.

The château passed in 1693 to le Grand Dauphin, who had some interior modifications executed (Kimball 1943 p 51) before exchanging it in 1695 for Meudon, more accessible from Versailles.

In 1716, it was sold to Marie Anne de Bourbon (1666–1739), dowager princess de Conti, the legitimised daughter of Louis XIV and Louise de la Vallière. On her death in 1739 it was sold to the king, by then Louis XV.

In spite of the loss of the immediately surrounding woods in favor of parterres with the Seine as backdrop and bosquets punctuated by statuary, the hunting was good in the neighboring forest of Sénart, the king's original motivation for purchasing Choisy.

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

Château de Choisy ranks #1,987 of 7,738 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #154 of the 469 mapped in France. Founded 1678, it is older than 24% of the atlas's dated landmarks — one of 580 atlas entries founded in the 17th century. Its Wikipedia articles were opened 1,780 times in the last 60 days, more than 63% of the atlas. 33 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. The nearest day-trip guide is Paris, 11 km away. See how France compares in the castle statistics.

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