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Origin and history

Villebon Castle is a fortress built at the end of the 14th century by Jeannet d'Estouteville, surrounded by moat and equipped with an interior courtyard of Renaissance style. Located 115 km southwest of Paris, in the department of Eure-et-Loir, it combines medieval architecture with bricks and Renaissance elements. The park, built "à la française" in the 18th century, converges towards the statue of the round of Diane, a late addition commissioned by the 6th Duke of Sully.

The castle changed hands several times: acquired in 1607 by Maximilien de Béthune, Duke of Sully, who lived there 24 years and died there in 1641, he received the kings Charles VI, Louis XI, Francis I and Henry IV. Sully kept exceptional furniture, such as a sofa bed with embroidered fabrics of the figure of Anne de Courtenay (1589), today at the National Monuments Centre in Paris. The family lived there until its sale in 1812 to the Marquis de Pontoi-Pontcarré, who undertook important restorations.

Ranked a Historic Monument in 1927 (after a first attempt aborted in 1862), the castle includes a chapel with a bell of 1546, a 17th century dovecote inscribed in 1981, and protected murals. Marcel Proust inspired himself for the "Château de Guermantes" in In search of lost time, transposing Villebon into a mythical literary place. Today owned by the family of La Raudière, he has been visiting since 1994.

The park and perspectives were designed to highlight Diane's statue, while the circular dovecote, in bricks with an internal rotating scale mechanism, testifies to the agricultural techniques of Ancien Régime. A reproduction of the castle, used in the 19th century for Guérin-Boutron chocolate advertisements, was exhibited at the Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions before its closure in 2005.

The archives also mention links with the Commission des Monuments Historiques: Prosper Mérimée intervened there in 1853 to encourage its preservation, noting in a letter that the "chain sounds" of the drawbridges evoked Gothic novels. Historical furniture, dispersed, includes rare pieces such as curtains and armchairs stamped with Sully's figure, now preserved in Paris.

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