France · 19th century
Château de la Mercerie is located in the commune of Magnac-Lavalette-Villars, Charente, France.
Enlarged in the 20th century in a classical Italian Renaissance style by two men, but never completed, it is nicknamed the Versailles charentais.
Located 5 km north-west of Villebois-Lavalette and 17 km south-east of Angoulême, not far from the Dordogne department, the château is built on the slopes of Puy de Magnac, a landmark on the watershed between the Charente and Garonne rivers. It is visible from many parts of southern Charente.
It can be reached via the D.81 from Angoulême and Torsac, or the D.5 from Villebois.
From the 16th to the 18th century, the Rousseau family were lords of La Mercerie. The family was ennobled in 1595 by the appointment of Gilles Rousseau as the King's squire.
The neo-Gothic château, built in the late 19th century, replaces the former dwelling.
In 1924, thanks to the generosity of their uncle, the Réthoré brothers, Raymond, an industrialist and later a Gaullist MP for the Charente, and Alphonse, a self-taught architect, bought the 600-hectare estate from the Mesnaud de Saint-Paul family, who had inherited the property through the 1799 marriage of Paul Mesnaud de Saint-Paul (born in Laplaud on October 20, 1766; died in Voulgézac on February 12, 1838), to Marie-Julie Rousseau de Magnac de la Mercerie.
In 1939, the two brothers undertook the extension of the château and planned to transform it into the Versailles charentais by building a long façade in the Italian Renaissance style, which took place mainly in 1947 with the help of workers but stopped in 1975 for lack of funds.
All the 19th-century rooms were lavishly decorated, with furniture, paintings, and sculpture collections. At the sale of the furniture of the 11th Duchesse de La Rochefoucauld (1866-1933) at the eponymous Château Charentais, he acquired furniture presumed to have come from the Count, then Prince Orlov (1787-1862), which can be seen on a Braun postcard depicting the château's grand salon around 1900.
Raymond Réthoré travels and brings back paintings, marble, woodwork, statues, chandeliers, panelling, and other treasures from abroad, and even, for a time, an Italian restorer is put in charge of the collections.
Text adapted from “Château de la Mercerie” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Château de la Mercerie ranks #5,332 of 9,079 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #475 of the 793 mapped in France. Founded c. 1875, it is older than 5% of the atlas's dated landmarks — one of 717 atlas entries founded in the 19th century. Its Wikipedia articles were opened 2,503 times in the last 60 days, more than 74% of the atlas. 3 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. See how France compares in the castle statistics.
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