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Heritage classified

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Origin and history

The Château de la Petite Roseraie, located in Châtenay-Malabry in the Hauts-de-Seine, is built in the seventeenth century. This aristocratic domain passes into the hands of influential personalities, including the Marshal of Ségur, the Arouet family (linked to Voltaire), Prince Francesco Borghèse, and the Count of Boigne. His wife organized trade fairs with opponents of Napoleon, such as Germaine de Staël, Benjamin Constant, or Châteaubriand, whose property near the Vallée aux Loups was often cited.

Voltaire claims a birth to the Petite Roseraie rather than to Paris, an affirmation supported by the memory of the Countess of Boigne, which evokes the "famous" place due to this event. In 1829 Alexander Roland-Gosselin, a foreign exchange agent, acquired the estate and had it expanded by landscape architect Louis-Sulpice Varé, who designed the park in 1855 and added an orangery and a children's house (now chapel in 1909). Roland-Gosselin assembles the existing buildings and demolishes the Arouet house.

After Roland-Gosselin died in 1866, his granddaughter, Marie-Alexandrine, founded an orphanage for young girls there in 1873-1875. In 1941, the state purchased the estate to set up the École normale supérieure d'éducation physique féminine (future CREPS). The castle was partially classified as a historic monument in 1946, protecting its facades, two walled rooms, the entrance gate, and the park.

The site illustrates the transformations of a noble domain into an educational and sporting place, while preserving traces of its literary and political past. Its park, its 19th-century salons, and its supposed link with Voltaire bear witness to the intellectual networks and social changes of the Île-de-France.

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