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Origin and history

Duchêne House, located in Montignac-Lascaux in the Dordogne, is a neoclassical building built between 1797 and 1803 for Jean Scalfer-Lagorce, mayor of Montignac and judge under the Restoration. Designed by the Parisian architect Jacques Molinos, it is inspired by the Villa Rotonda de Palladio, with a square plan, a central circular room with a staircase, and a facade decorated with a doric peristyle. Molinos, admirer of Palladio, includes 16 columns supporting a dome and a mansard roof.

The house changed hands in 1862 when Jean-François-Adolphe Scalfer, the last heir, sold it to Joseph Duchêne, tax collector. Between 1835 and 1881, it housed a boarding school for young girls run by the Sisters of Nevers, whose profits (2,482 francs in 1835) were paid to the poor. The Treaty of Foundation of the boarding school, quoted by Fr Marquay, emphasizes this charitable vocation.

Acquired by the municipality in 1876, the house retained the name of Duchêne and became a kindergarten and rental housing until 2009. A Republican girls' school was established there in 1881, before being transferred in 1937. The building, registered as a historical monument in 2011, illustrates the adaptation of an aristocratic home to public needs, from education to social housing.

The cadastral plan of 1813 reveals a property including house, courtyard, rural building and garden with water room. Subsequent changes, linked to its school use, altered the original internal distribution. Today, the house bears witness to both the neoclassical architectural heritage and the social history of Montignac, marked by the evolution of public and private uses.

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