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Origin and history

The castle of Ermenonville, located in the Oise, finds its origins in the 10th century with a first construction under Hugues Capet. In the Middle Ages, he belonged to feudal lords such as the family of Lorris, and occasionally welcomed Louis XI. In 1600, Henry IV acquired it for his faithful Dominique de Vic, who received Gabrielle d'Estrées there. The castle then retains a medieval aspect, with dungeon and towers, until the major transformations of the eighteenth century.

In 1725, Claude-Louis Lombard modernized the castle by removing the dungeon, expanding the wings, and adding baroque decorations such as wrought iron frontons and balconies. The castle then passed in 1754 to René Hatte, a rich general farmer, and in 1763 to the Marquis René-Louis de Girardin. The latter, inspired by Rousseau's New Heloïse, radically transforms the park into an English garden punctuated with factories, while modernizing the interior of the castle. In 1778 Jean-Jacques Rousseau stayed there and died, attracting illustrious visitors such as Marie-Antoinette or Benjamin Franklin.

After the Revolution, the castle declined under the heirs of Girardin, unable to maintain it. In 1830, the prince of Condé obtained it for hunting, but the estate returned to the Girardin at his death. In 1874, the castle was sold and fragmented: Gustave-Edgard de Girardin tried unsuccessfully to restore it before it passed into the hands of the Radziwiłł family in 1878. The latter began work, but the 20th century saw the castle change hands several times, becoming in turn a hotel, a retirement home, and a place occupied by the Germans during the Second World War.

In 1930, the castle and some factories of the park were classified as Historic Monuments. The park, saved by the Touring club of France in 1938, became the Parc Jean-Jacques-Rousseau. In the 20th century, the castle was used as a set of films (The Visitors, Elena and the Men) and underwent various conversions, including a brief occupation by the Krishna consciousness sect in the 1980s. Since 1991, it has been home to a luxury hotel and restaurant, before being bought in 2018 by businessman Antoine Haswani.

The park, conceived as a philosophical landscape, originally had more than fifty factories, some of which remain like the Temple of Philosophy or the island of the Peupliers, where Rousseau was buried before his transfer to the Pantheon. The castle, though transformed, preserves elements of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, testifying to its evolution between seigneurial residence, place of memory of the Enlightenment, and tourist heritage.

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