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Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The Château de Villette in Gluer, in the Ardennes, finds its origins in a medieval strong house destroyed in 1552 during the raids of Martin van Rossum, lieutenant of Charles Quint. The three western spans of the present facade, flanked by round towers, were rebuilt in the second half of the sixteenth century. This first Renaissance-style building had a central vestibule separating two large halls. According to local tradition, Mazarin s.

In the 18th century, the castle was acquired by Jean-François Maucomble, seigneur engrégé de Gluer and father of the future general of Empire Jean-François Nicolas Joseph Maucomble. The latter radically transforms the property: it adds the north pavilion to protrude, homogenises the five-span main façade, reviews the openings (consoles and Regency style window keys), and develops a garden. A wrought iron balcony adorns the northern façade, while a third tower, with a gallery and a corbelled passageway, is built at the rear. The commons in L, partially closing the court of honor, include a pigeon-pig and a monumental entrance.

During the Revolution, the Maucomble family protected Nicolas Philbert, constitutional bishop of Sedan, who died at the castle in June 1797. Entered quietly into the cemetery of the estate church, his grave disappeared before being rediscovered in 1982 with a marble plaque bearing the epitaph: "In sight of the wolf, he did not flee and did not abandon his sheep". This burial, solemnly rebuked, bears witness to the castle's role as a refuge during religious persecution.

In the 19th century, the estate passed into the hands of the Kistemanns, wool traders in Sedan, who undertook new changes: a modified rear façade, the addition of a winter garden and a passageway, and the creation of a basin replacing a missing wing of commons. After a partial abandonment after World War II, the castle, which was listed as a historical monument in 1996, was restored. Today it is privately owned and offers rental rooms for events and a guest house, while maintaining its rural environment on the Meuse river.

The architecture of the castle thus combines defensive elements inherited from the 16th century (round towers, medieval cellars) with more refined decorations of the 18th and 19th centuries (forged iron balcony, Regency sculptures). Its history reflects the political and religious upheavals of the region, from the wars of Charles Quint to the Revolution, through its role as seigneurial residence and then bourgeois.

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