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Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The Château de la Ferté-Vidame came into being in the 10th century, with a first mention in 985. In the 14th century, the family of Vendôme, titrée vidame de Chartres, rebuilt the medieval castle, marked by a fortified enclosure and eight towers. In 1635 Claude de Rouvroy, Duke of Saint-Simon and favourite of Louis XIII, became his owner. His son, the memorialist Louis de Rouvroy, resided there and wrote part of his Memoirs, while preserving the medieval aspect of the castle, attested by the gouaches of Van Blarenberghe (1750). Around 1718-1719 he had the stables built, now called "little castle".

In 1764, the estate was transferred to the banker Jean-Joseph Laborde, who entrusted architect Antoine Matthieu Le Carpentier with a total reconstruction in a monumental classical style inspired by Vaux-le-Vicomte. The new castle, completed in 1771, has 167 rooms spread over three floors, with oval salons with domes and brick and stone facades. Laborde spent £14 million there and received Louis XV and Joseph II of Austria. The park is redesigned to French, with basins, canals and driveways, while the medieval moats are transformed into grassed ditches.

In 1784, under the pressure of Louis XVI, Laborde sold the castle to the Duke of Penthièvre, who passed it on to his daughter, the Duchess of Orléans. During the Revolution, the estate was confiscated, looted and partially demolished in 1798: roofs torn, interiors destroyed, materials recovered. In 1803 the state became its owner before returning it to the Duchess of Orleans at the Restoration. His son, the future King Louis-Philippe, tried an aborted restoration in 1848. The castle, ruined, then passed into the hands of private owners (Baron de Dordolot, Charles Laurent) before being acquired by Citroën in 1938 to set up a test centre there.

Ranked Historic Monument in 1976 (ruins and commons) and then in 1991 (park and pavilions), the estate was acquired in 1987 by the department of Eure-et-Loir. Since 2001, restoration sites have stabilized the remains. In 2020, a museum dedicated to Saint-Simon opened in the Saint-Dominique Pavilion, integrating the Maisons des Illustres network.

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