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Origin and history

The estate of Madame Élisabeth, also known as the Domaine de Montreuil, is located at numbers 24 and 26 of Rue Champ-Lagarde, in the district of Montreuil in Versailles (Yvelines, Île-de-France). This place, initially a medieval seigneury with a fortress in the 12th century, was transformed into a farm by the order of the Celestines under Charles VI before being integrated into the estate of Versailles under Louis XV. In the 18th century, it became a popular place for the aristocracy for its pleasure properties, fed by a source that is now extinct.

In 1772, the Prince and Princess of Rohan-Guéméné acquired the estate and expanded it to 8 hectares, entrusting the transformations to architect Alexandre-Louis Étable de La Brière. Their bankruptcy in 1783 enabled Louis XVI to buy the home for his sister, Elizabeth of France, then 19 years old. Marie-Antoinette gave her this gift by announcing: "You are here at home," during a nostalgic walk in Montreuil, where Elizabeth had played a child.

From 1787 to 1789, architect Jean-Jacques Huvé modernized the buildings in a neo-classical style, adding bodies of stone houses, a circular chapel with zenithal lighting, and a Turkish boudoir. The furniture, commissioned by cabinetmakers Sené and Boulard, is now partially preserved at the Louvre and the Nissim-de-Camondo Museum. The park, set up in an "Anglo-Chinese taste" (fictitious groves, waterfalls, bridges), was lined with a wall-terrace offering views of the gardens. Élisabeth also established a dispensary for the poor, cared for by the doctor Louis Guillaume Le Monnier.

The Revolution saves the domain of fragmentation. In the 19th century he moved to the Clausse family, including Charles Louis, Mayor of Versailles, who died there in 1831. The buildings were profoundly renovated under the Restoration or the Monarchy of July, then restored between the two world wars by Jean-Baptiste Chantrell. Sold to a real estate company in 1955, the estate was bought in 1984 by the Conseil départemental des Yvelines, which made it a public historic place. Orangery, acquired in 1997, now hosts temporary exhibitions.

Today, the body of rectangular houses, flanked by two pavilions and adorned with a peristyle with columns, preserves only three original rooms of Elizabeth's apartment: its room (unused because it was to sleep at the castle), the Turkish lounge and the harpsichord room. The park, which is freely accessible, and the facades of orangery have been protected as historical monuments since 1980. The domain is now integrated into the National Estate of Versailles by decree of 2024.

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