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Key figures

Origin and history

The château du Haut-Buc, located in Buc in the Yvelines, was originally attached to the royal bailliage at the end of the seventeenth century. Integrated into the Grand Parc de Versailles, he served as Louis XIV to discreetly house his natural son, Louis Alexandre de Bourbon, Count of Toulouse, before his legitimation in 1681. The building was destroyed in 1740 by order of Louis XV, marking the end of his first existence.

Between 1864 and 1866, a new 19th-century castle was erected for Léon Thomas, a wealthy Parisian bourgeois. Acquired in 1893 by Noël Bardac, then in 1918 by Gentilli di Giuseppe — astronomer who installed a giant telescope there in 1922 — the estate changed hands several times. In 1929, it was purchased by the American couple Mac Cune, before being abandoned in 1939, then occupied by the German army during World War II.

The French state purchased the property in 1954 to make it a boarding school for the Lycée La Bruyère de Versailles. The commune of Buc became its owner in 1988 and undertook renovations in 2000. Part of the area has been home to the Franco-German High School in Buc since 1981. The castle, of three floors with an attic and a balcony style Louis XV, retains a 17th century guard lodge, the last vestige of the old construction.

The gardens, renovated in the 1990s by Éric Pouchin, house sculptures inspired by classical works, such as an allegory of the Air or a sphinx, as well as a canal. These spaces, today public, reflect the artistic and historical heritage of the site. The castle is also known for having inspired Edgar P. Jacobs in S.O.S. Meteors (1959), under the fictitious name of castle of Troussalet.

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