Timeline

Key figures

Origin and history

The Château des Clayes-sous-Bois was built between 1800 and 1816 in a neo-classical style by the Delaborne family, landowners of Villepreux. Its rectangular façade, framed by two circular towers surmounted by lanterns, is decorated with a central belfry. The castle, symbol of local prestige, dominates a landscaped park including a square chapel and a pond. It is the only building in the municipality to display public time before the construction of a dedicated town hall.

In 1915, the castle was acquired by Madame Bloch-Levallois, then by Jeanne de Montagnac in the 1920s, who undertook restoration work before reselling it in 1926. The new owners, Lucy and Jos Hessel, Parisian art merchants, make it a world-wide venue, welcoming personalities such as Tristan Bernard, Édouard Vuillard and Léon Blum. The estate, requisitioned by the Nazis during the occupation, was burned in August 1944 during the German retreat, leaving only the two towers and the commons standing.

The communes, integrated into the remains of the 14th century hunting relay (now a municipal library), were rehabilitated in the 1980s to accommodate cultural and associative activities. Diane Park, classified as a heritage park in 2003, is home to a four-hundred-year-old plane tree known as the Diane Tree, planted according to legend by Henry II's favourite in 1556. This plane tree, labeled "remarkable tree of France" in 2000, is the last plant witness to the seigneurial history of the site.

The original hunting relay, built in 1360 by Pierre Potel on the ruins of a Benedictine house, was a square hotel surrounded by ditches, whose south wing remains. This pavilion, frequented by Diane de Poitiers, still bears the traces of his passage: three marble shields representing her in laurel, hunting and armor. The façade and roofs of the building have been listed as historic monuments since 1872.

In the 20th century, the castle and its park became a place of local memory, evoking both the medieval heritage (hunting relais, ecclesiastical tithe) and modern upheavals (destructing war 1944, post-Second World War urbanization). The commons, today cultural spaces, perpetuate this duality between history and contemporary life, while the park offers direct access to the Bois-d'Arcy forest, a former royal cynégetic reserve.

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