Vaux-le-Vicomte facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte |
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View from the rond d'eau of the garden
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| General information | |
| Type | Château |
| Architectural style | Baroque |
| Town or city | Maincy |
| Country | France |
| Construction started | 1656 |
| Completed | 1661 |
| Design and construction | |
| Architect | Louis Le Vau |
The Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte (French pronunciation: [ʃato də vo lə vikɔ̃t]) is a beautiful Baroque French château (a large country house or castle). It is located in Maincy, a town near Melun, about 55 kilometers (34 miles) southeast of Paris in France.
This amazing château was built between 1658 and 1661. It was made for Nicolas Fouquet, who was a very important person. He was the Superintendent of Finances for King Louis XIV. Vaux-le-Vicomte was a very important building in Europe during the mid-17th century.
At Vaux-le-Vicomte, three talented people worked together for the first time. They were the architect Louis Le Vau, the landscape architect André Le Nôtre, and the painter Charles Le Brun. Their teamwork started the "Louis XIV style." This style mixed architecture, inside design, and landscape design. The garden's strong visual line is a great example of this style.
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History of Vaux-le-Vicomte
Vaux-le-Vicomte was once a small château between the king's homes at Vincennes and Fontainebleau. In 1641, Nicolas Fouquet bought the estate. He was a very ambitious 26-year-old who loved art. Fouquet was very generous and attracted many artists.
In 1656, Fouquet became King Louis XIV's Superintendent of Finances. He then asked Le Vau, Le Brun, and Le Nôtre to make his estate and garden grander. Fouquet's love for art helped these three artists do their best work.
To make enough space for his big plans, Fouquet bought and tore down three villages. The people who lived there then worked to take care of the gardens. It is said that 18,000 workers helped build it. The cost was about 16 million livres, which was a huge amount of money.
The château and Fouquet became famous for grand parties, books, and art. The writer Jean de La Fontaine and the playwright Molière were friends with Fouquet. At the opening of Vaux-le-Vicomte, a Molière play was performed. There was also a big dinner by François Vatel and an amazing fireworks show.
The Grand Party and Fouquet's Arrest
The château was beautiful and very fancy. But these features led to trouble for Fouquet. The king had Fouquet arrested soon after a famous party on August 17, 1661. Molière's play 'Les Fâcheux' was first shown at this party. The celebration was too grand, and Fouquet's home was too luxurious.
Fouquet wanted to impress the king. Part of Vaux-le-Vicomte was even built just for the king. But Fouquet's plan did not work. Jean-Baptiste Colbert, another important person, made the king believe that Fouquet's wealth came from using public money unfairly. Colbert then took Fouquet's place as superintendent. He had Fouquet arrested. Later, the writer Voltaire said about the party: "On 17 August, at six in the evening Fouquet was the King of France: at two in the morning he was nobody."
After Fouquet's Time
After Fouquet was arrested and put in prison for life, his wife was sent away. Vaux-le-Vicomte was taken over by the government. The king took 120 tapestries, all the statues, and all the orange trees from Vaux-le-Vicomte. He then sent the same team of artists (Le Vau, Le Nôtre, and Le Brun) to design an even bigger project: the Palace and gardens of Versailles.
Fouquet's wife got her property back 10 years later. She lived there with her oldest son. In 1705, after her husband and son died, she decided to sell Vaux-le-Vicomte.
Modern History of the Château
Marshal Claude Louis Hector de Villars bought the château in 1705. In 1764, his son sold the estate to the Duke of Praslin. His family owned the property for over 100 years.
In 1875, the estate was sold at a public auction to Alfred Sommier. The château was empty, some buildings were falling apart, and the gardens were completely overgrown. Alfred Sommier started to restore and fix up the château. He was helped by architect Gabriel-Hippolyte Destailleur and landscape architect Elie Lainé. When Sommier died in 1908, the château and gardens looked like they did originally. His son, Edme Sommier, and his daughter-in-law finished the work. His family still owns and takes care of the château today.
Since 1967, Patrice de Vogüé, Alfred Sommier's great-grandson, has been the owner. He received it as a wedding gift. At that time, the estate had only a few items that Fouquet originally owned. For a while, the family lived on the first floor. Then they moved to the renovated stables. This is the largest private château in France, with 1,235 acres of gardens.
In 1968, the château opened for public tours. A big restoration project started in 1976 and was still going on in 2017. Just fixing the roof took six years! The beautiful Baroque ceiling in the Chambre des Muses was restored in 2016–2017. It was shown to the public in March 2017. Today, Patrice de Vogüé's three sons manage the château. They are determined to keep preserving it. They have a ten-year plan for restoring the buildings and gardens.
About 300,000 people visit Vaux-le-Vicomte each year. Most of them are from France. The château is recognized by the state as a monument historique. It is open most of the year but closes for about two months in winter. During Christmas, the château is decorated with 150 trees, 10,000 items, and 4,000 meters of lights.
Amazing Features of the Château
Architecture and Design
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The château is at the northern end of a long, straight line that runs north to south. The entrance faces north. Both sides of the building are perfectly symmetrical. The inside layout is also almost completely symmetrical.
The two rooms in the center, the entrance hall and the oval salon, were once open-air spaces. They divided the château into two parts. So, the decorations in these rooms looked like they were outside. Three sets of arches line up perfectly. These arches let visitors see all the way through to the garden's main line even before entering the château.
Because the building was divided, there are two matching staircases instead of one big one. The rooms on the east side were for the king. The rooms on the west side were for Fouquet. It was common for important houses to have rooms ready for the king, as he traveled often.
Another interesting thing is how thick the main part of the building is. It has two rows of rooms running east and west. Most French châteaux at that time had only one row of rooms in the middle. Vaux-le-Vicomte was the first château to have this double-thick design. Also, the main rooms are on the ground floor, not the first floor. This is why there isn't a grand staircase or a long gallery, which were common in other châteaux.
The château was first planned to be built with brick and stone. But later, Fouquet and Le Vau decided to use only stone. This might have been because of the stone used at François Mansart's Château de Maisons. The buildings for servants, located in front of the château, still used brick and stone.
The main château is built on a platform surrounded by a moat. You reach it by two bridges, one on the north and one on the south. The moat is a charming old feature from medieval castles.
The entrance side of the château looks very French. It has two side sections next to a central part. These parts are topped with steep, pointed roofs. These kinds of roofs were common in medieval times but were becoming less popular.
The garden side of the château is considered even more beautiful. The huge, tall Grand Salon sticks out from the main building. It has a large slate dome on top. The use of a central oval salon was a new idea that Le Vau got from Italy. This oval room is a highlight of the house. The side sections of the garden facade are three bays wide and have traditional tall slate roofs. This balances the central domed salon nicely.
Gardens of Vaux-le-Vicomte
The château stands on a raised area in the middle of the woods. It marks the edge between different parts of the land, each designed in a special way. This looks even more striking today because the trees are much older than they were in the 1600s.
Le Nôtre's garden was the most important part of the whole design. It stretches for almost 3 kilometers (nearly 2 miles). It has a balanced layout of water pools, canals, fountains, gravel paths, and patterned flowerbeds. This design is even more organized than the huge garden Le Nôtre later created at Versailles.
The area naturally had a lot of water, with two small rivers meeting in the park. One of these rivers was turned into the Grand Canal, which leads to a square pool.
Le Nôtre created a magnificent view from the house. He used the rules of perspective to make it look amazing. He placed the canal at the lowest part of the garden, so you couldn't see it from the main viewpoint at the château. Past the canal, the garden goes up a large open lawn. It ends with the Hercules column, which was added later. Bushes and trees framed the garden, making it look like a stage for royal parties.
Hidden Tricks in the Garden Design
Le Nôtre used a clever optical illusion in his garden design. It's called anamorphosis abscondita, which means 'hidden distortion'. This trick makes things look closer than they really are. For example, the reflecting pools are narrower closer to the château than they are farther away. This makes them appear closer to you.
From a special spot at the top of the stairs behind the château, the garden looks like it's all revealed in one single glance. At first, you see rows of bushes, paths, fountains, statues, and flowers, all arranged symmetrically. The main feature is a large reflecting pool with statues in grottos (small caves) on either side.
As you walk through the garden, you discover that it is much bigger than it looked from the château. You pass a circular pool that first looked oval. Then you see a canal that cuts through the garden. The grottos and statues become clearer. But when you walk towards the grottos, they seem out of place. This is because the grottos are actually much lower than the rest of the garden and separated by a long canal. This optical effect makes the garden feel very unusual and exciting to explore.
In Fouquet's time, people could cross the canal in a boat. Walking around the canal lets you see the woods beyond the garden. Once you pass the canal and grottos, you reach a large sloping lawn. From this point, the garden looks much longer than it actually is. These many discoveries you make as you walk through the dynamic garden are very different from the static view you get from the château.
See also
- List of Baroque residences
- History of early modern period domes
- List of tourist attractions in Paris
