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Origin and history

Vallière Castle was built in 1894 for Agénor de Gramont, 11th Duke of Gramont, and his wife Marguerite de Rothschild, on a historical estate belonging to Joseph Bonaparte (1798-1814). The latter had built a landscaped park between 1808 and 1814, incorporating medieval ponds created by the monks of Chaalis and picturesque factories such as the Vallière Pavilion or the Baths of Diane. The estate, acquired in 1829 by the prince of Condé, then passed to his mistress Sophie Dawes, then to his goddaughter Sophie Thanaron, wife of the prefect Henri Corbin, before being sold in 1892 to the Gramonts.

The castle, a neo-Gothic style inspired by the Loire castles (including Azay-le-Rideau), houses a chapel, a theatre and thirty rooms with bathrooms, a rare luxury for the period. Its English-speaking park, organized around four ponds including Lake Epine, was renowned for its perspectives and factories, such as the Rochefort Tower or the Cave of Loves. The estate was a place of hunting and social receptions, welcoming personalities like Marcel Proust in 1904. During the First World War, it was the scene of a confrontation on September 2, 1914, marking the maximum advance of German troops near Paris.

Ranked a natural site in 1961 and partially protected as a Historic Monument in 1975 (facades and roofs), the castle changed hands in 1982, leaving the Gramont family. Today, owned by Emir Al-Tajir Mahdi, the estate, although closed to the public, retains an exceptional architectural and landscape heritage, including vestiges of Joseph Bonaparte's developments and scattered art collections, such as the family portraits of the Gramonts, now deposited in Bayonne.

The Grand Park, formerly accessible to walkers, extended over 1,500 hectares with islands, canals and gazebos, such as Molton Island or the Buffon kiosk. The ponds, fed by the river Theve, were connected by navigational circuits under Bonaparte. However, since the 19th century, maintenance declined, and landscape perspectives, once admired for their "naturally tamed" beauty, are now obstructed by dense vegetation. The estate remains a major testimony of the art of gardens and French aristocratic history.

Among the remarkable elements, the chapel of Sainte-Marguerite-des-Grès (XII and XIX centuries) and the pavilion of Vallière, a former fishing rendezvous, remain despite the abandonment. The park also housed orchid greenhouses, a haras (Charlepont), and a monument to the deaths of the First World War. The Gramont art collections, including works by Boldini, Laszlo or Vigée-Lebrun, were transferred to the Pau Museum and Bayonne after 1981. The estate, although private, remains a protected ecological site in the Oise-Pays regional natural park of France.

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