Timeline

Key figures

Origin and history

Château de la Canière, located in Thuret in Puy-de-Dôme, is a neo-classical residence built in 1889 by the Bérard de Chazelles family. It was built to preserve the collections of Antoine Lavoisier, French chemist guillotine in 1794, whose property was preserved by his wife, Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze. This castle replaces an earlier building of 1808, designed by architect Pierre Rousseau, who himself succeeded in the remains of a 15th century castle.

Lavoisier's collections, transmitted by inheritance to the Bérard de Chazelles family through the marriage of Gabrielle Paulze with Pierre-Léon Bérard in 1834, were dispersed in 1925 to museums such as the Lecoq Museum of Clermont-Ferrand or the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers in Paris. David's famous portrait of the Lavoisier husbands, once preserved here, is now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The castle has had various uses: residence of John Law of Lauriston in 1720, center of the association The Patriarch in the 1980s-1990s, then luxury hotel 5 stars in 2011 before becoming again a private house open for rent. Magdeleine Bérard de Chazelles, the last heiress, marked the story by her commitment as a nurse during World War I and her role in the Resistance during World War II, before her deportation to Ravensbrück in 1944.

The architecture of the present castle is the work of Émile Camut, known for his achievements as the Hydrothermal Establishment of Mount Dore. The domain, linked to major figures in French scientific and political history, illustrates the cultural and memorial heritage of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region.

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