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Origin and history

The Château de Charentonneau, also known as Château Gaillard, was a seigneurial residence built between the 17th and 18th centuries on the domain of Charentonneau, in Maisons-Alfort (Val-de-Marne). Mentioned in 1170 as Carentoniolo, this medieval fief originally belonged to the Abbey of Saint Maur. Over the centuries, he passed into the hands of notables such as Nicolas Duru (1444), the Alligret families (XVI century) and Gaillard (from 1671), who gave him his alternative name. The estate, rebuilt at the end of the 18th century, became a private property under the Empire, successively owned by Marshal Serurier and Baron Rodier-Salièges.

In the 19th century, the castle and its 250-hectare park were fragmented and partly lotted, notably by the Pastré and Delalain families. In 1929, the remains of the orangery – two arched walls in the middle of the wall decorated with mascarons – were included in the additional inventory of historical monuments. Despite this protection, the castle was demolished in the 1950s to give way to a plot of 704 dwellings, the Residence of Château Gaillard. Today, only the orangery walls, visible in the private park, bear witness to this missing heritage.

The architecture of the castle, described as "scenic" in the 18th century, combined a body of brick and stone houses, a gallery decorated with mythological statues (Apollon, Flora), and an orangery with glass arches. The estate also included an 18th century watermill, destroyed after a fire in 1883, as well as a farm and outbuildings surrounded by ditches. The old plans reveal a landscaped park with islands on the Marne, now integrated into the modern district of Charentonneau.

The toponym Charentonneau originated in a medieval charter of 1170-1180, evoking an estate linked to the Abbey of Saint-Maur. In the Middle Ages, the fief housed a manor house, a common mill and agricultural land, often disputed between local and religious lords. The seigneury, endowed with high justice in the eighteenth century, was a place of power until the Revolution, where the castle, confiscated as demigrated property, was sold. Its decline accelerated with the urbanization of the 20th century, erasing almost any trace of this former aristocratic residence.

The last cinematic traces of the castle appear in Archimède le clochard (1959), where Jean Gabin shot scenes among the ruins, surrounded by the new bars of buildings. This contrast between heritage and modernity illustrates the radical transformation of the site, now shared between private condominiums and public spaces. Ancient archives and engravings, such as that of Albert Flamen (1646), remain the main testimonies of his past fascist.

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