Domaine de Villèle

Museums of France

Miscellaneous

Crédit photo : Matthieu Sontag - Sous licence Creative Commons

Timeline

Temps modernes

Révolution/Empire

XIXe siècle

Époque contemporaine

1800

1900

2000

1770

Desbassayns Housing Foundation

1788

Construction of main house

1822

Upgrading of the sugar plant

1841-1843

Construction of the Pointue Chapel

1848

Final abolition of slavery

1974

Creation of the Villèle Historical Museum

Aujourd'hui

Heritage classified

The built and unbuilt parts of the estate, in whole, excluding the gatekeeper's pavilion, as surrounded by red on the plan annexed to the order (Box DM 0002, 0490, 0031): classification by order of 19 December 2019

Key figures

Henri-Paulin Panon Desbassayns - Founder of the estate and Creole officer	Constructed the main house in 1788
Marie Anne Thérèse Ombline Gonneau - Wife of Desbassayns and rich heiress	Co-founder of housing through its land input
Madame Desbassayns (veuve) - Owner and modernizer of the estate	Fits build the sugar factory (1822) and chapel
Charles-André Desbassayns - Son and administrator of the domain	Directed exploitation in the 19th century
Joseph Martial Wetzell - Metropolitan engineer	Modernisa the sugar factory in 1831
Joseph de Villèle - Ms. Desbassayns' Gendre	Conservative and Slave Political Figure

Origin and history

The estate of Villèle, originally called the home of Desbassayns, was founded in 1770 by Henri-Paulin Panon Desbassayns, a Creole officer, and his wife Marie Anne Thérèse Ombline Gonneau, a land heiress. Their marriage united 190 hectares and 80 slaves, marking the beginning of an agricultural operation which would extend to 750 hectares and 417 slaves in 1797. The main house, built in 1788, is inspired by the Indian architecture of Pondicherry, reflecting the passage of Desbassayns in the French counters.

At the beginning of the 19th century, in the face of the abolition of the slave trade (1817) and the competition for beet sugar, Madame Desbassayns modernized the operation by building a sugar factory in 1822, equipped with a steam mill. His son Charles-André took the lead. The plantation, designated as a "model factory" in 1831, illustrates the industrialization of sugar production in Réunion. Despite this, the slave labour remained central, with 462 slaves in 1829.

The fear of revolts (1809 in Saint Paul, 1811 in Saint Leu) led Madame Desbassayns to accelerate the evangelization of slaves, leading to the construction of the Pointue chapel (1841-1843). This strategy aimed to stabilize the social order before the definitive abolition of slavery in 1848. The domain, symbol of colonial conservatism, welcomed political and intellectual elites, while remaining a slave bastion until its end.

After 1848, the estate declined with the sugar crisis. The factory closed in 1908, and the property passed into the hands of Villèle's family (by marriage in 1846), before being ceded in 1960. In 1974, the General Council of La Réunion established the Villèle Historical Museum, highlighting its architectural and memorial heritage, including the Slave Hospital converted into a memorial in 1996. The site is listed as a Historic Monument in 2019.

The estate includes several remarkable elements: the master's house (the "malabar" style), the separate kitchen, the slave hospital with its memorial, the ruins of the sugar factory, and the Pointue chapel, classified in 1970. The latter, dedicated to the evangelization of slaves, now houses commemorative works, such as the sculpture Three Brothers (2018). The site thus illustrates the complex history of slavery, colonization and the plantation economy in Reunion.