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Origin and history

The Royal Chapel of Saint-Louis de Dreux, located in the enclosure of the Castle of Dreux in Eure-et-Loir, is the necropolis of the Orléans family. Originally, it was the collegiate Saint-Étienne, attached to the castle since 1023. In 1775 Louis-Jean-Marie de Bourbon, Duke of Penthièvre, transferred the remains of his family there from Rambouillet, making this place a family burial. During the Revolution, the graves were desecrated and the bodies thrown into a mass grave.

In 1816, Marie-Adélaïde de Bourbon, Duchess of Orléans, bought the land and built a neo-classical chapel there by architect Claude-Philippe Cramail, on the site of the pit. His son, Louis-Philippe I, king of the French, enlarged the chapel in a neo-Gothic style from 1839, under the direction of Pierre-Bernard Lefranc. The chapel then became the "Saint-Denis des Orléans", home to the burials of the dynasty, enriched with sculptures and stained glass by Ingres, Delacroix and Viollet-le-Duc.

The chapel also houses an organ of Cavaillé-Coll (1845) and stained glass windows of the Sèvres factory, some of which were designed by Ingres. Damaged during World War II, it is now managed by the Saint-Louis Foundation, founded in 1974. It remains an active place of memory for the Orléans family, still hosting ceremonies such as the funeral of Henry d'Orléans in 2019.

Under the chapel, three levels of crypts and vaults house the remains of Orléans, Bourbon-Penthièvre and relics, such as the heart of Regent Philippe d'Orléans. The circular crypt, rearranged in the 20th century, hosts the most recent burials. Two cenotaphs, those of the brothers of Louis-Philippe I, were transferred there in 1986 since Versailles.

Ranked a historical monument in 1977, the chapel illustrates the turbulent history of the House of Orleans, between exile, monarchy restoration and funeral heritage. Its architecture combines medieval heritage (reparts of the 14th century), neo-classicism and neo-gothic, reflecting the stylistic and political evolutions of France of the 18th and 19th centuries.

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