Château de Maisons

The Château de Maisons (now Château de Maisons-Laffitte [ʃato də mɛzɔ̃ lafit]), designed by François Mansart from 1630 to 1651, is a prime example of French Baroque architecture and a reference point in the history of French architecture. The château is located in Maisons-Laffitte, a northwestern suburb of Paris, in the department of Yvelines, Île-de-France.

The Longueil family, long associated with the Parlement of Paris, had been in possession of part of the seigneurie of Maisons since 1460, and a full share since 1602. Beginning in 1630, and for the next decades, René de Longueil, first president of the Cour des aides and then président à mortier to the Parlement of Paris, devoted the fortune inherited by his wife, Madeleine Boulenc de Crévecœur (who died in 1636), to the construction of a magnificent château. By 1649, he was able to spend the summer months in his new house, but works on the outbuildings continued after that date. Louis XIV visited Maisons in April 1651.

The attribution to François Mansart was common knowledge among contemporaries. Charles Perrault reported its reputation: "The château of Maisons, of which he [Mansart] had made all the buildings and all the gardens, is of such a singular beauty that there is not a curious foreigner who does not go there to see it, as one of the finest things that we have in France."

Nevertheless, the sole surviving document mentioning Mansart's name is a payment of 20,000 livres from Longueil in 1657, apparently occasioned by the final completion of the château. A pamphlet with the title La Mansarade accused the architect of having realised, after completing the construction of the first floor, that he had committed an error in the plans and razed everything built so far in order to commence anew.

Perrault emphasizes that the architect had the habit of remodelling certain parts of his buildings more than once in a search for perfection.

After the death of René de Longueil, in 1677, the château passed to his heirs until 1732, and then in succession to the marquise de Belleforière, then to the marquis de Soyécourt. In 1777, it became the property of King Louis XVI's brother, Charles Philip, count of Artois, who carried out important interior transformations under the direction of his house architect François-Joseph Bélanger. These works were interrupted in 1782 for lack of funds.

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

Château de Maisons ranks #949 of 7,738 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #82 of the 469 mapped in France. Founded 1650, it is older than 26% of the atlas's dated landmarks — one of 580 atlas entries founded in the 17th century. Its Wikipedia articles were opened 5,410 times in the last 60 days, more than 85% of the atlas. 37 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. The nearest day-trip guide is Paris, 18 km away. See how France compares in the castle statistics.

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