France · 17th century
The Château de Courances (pronounced [ʃɑto də kuʁɑ̃s]) at Courances, Essonne is a French château built in approximately 1630. The house and gardens are open to the public.
In 1552, Côme Clausse, a notary and royal secretary to the King, acquired from the Lapite family the former seigneurial dwelling at Courances, at the western edge of the Forest of Fontainebleau. His heir conveyed it in 1622 to Claude Gallard, another royal secretary, who is doubtless the builder of the present château, of an H-plan laid out on a rectangular platform that is surrounded by a moat.
The original Louis XIII style château is known from the engravings of Israël Henriet and Israël Silvestre, about 1650. The evaluation of the property drawn up in 1638 mentions, apart from the manor house, four barns, a press house, two wheat mills, and two mills "straddling the river". "Above and beyond this is a mill called the fulling mill, with the forecourt of said chateau on one side, and the stream of the pond on the other", it says.
In the 18th century, the house was modernized by Anne-Catherine Gallard, widow of Nicolas Potier de Novion, who opened up a proper cour d'honneur by demolishing the wall and entryway that had enclosed the courtyard. Later her granddaughter Léontine-Philippine de Novion and her husband Aymar de Nicolay further modernized the château (1775–1777) by opening new bays and applying a large pedimented center to each façade. Following the French Revolution the château was abandoned for nearly 40 years, which gave time for a horse chestnut to grow through the floors of the building.
In 1830, the Nicolay heirs (see Nicolay family) conveyed away the château, which was bought in 1872 by German banker Baron Samuel de Haber. Haber and his son-in-law Count Octave de Béhague hired the architect Gabriel-Hippolyte Destailleur to restore the château in a campaign that lasted from 1873 to 1884. Destailleur retrieved the brickwork from beneath a layer of stucco, raised the rooflines of the pavilions and supplied zinc ornaments for the roofs. The grand internal staircase was demolished and monumental ramps of Fontainebleau inspiration were applied to the façades. A new wing with broken roofline was erected over the former kitchens to shelter the master suites, and was linked to the old wing by a gallery.
New outbuildings constructed at the same time were destroyed by fire in 1976.
Text adapted from “Château de Courances” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Château de Courances ranks #2,509 of 9,079 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #198 of the 793 mapped in France. Founded c. 1630, it is older than 28% of the atlas's dated landmarks — one of 721 atlas entries founded in the 17th century. Its Wikipedia articles were opened 3,112 times in the last 60 days, more than 78% of the atlas. 4 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. The nearest day-trip guide is Paris, 47 km away. See how France compares in the castle statistics.
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