Château d'Hérouville

The Château d'Hérouville is a French château of the 18th century (1740) located in the village of Hérouville, in the Val d'Oise département of France, near Paris. The château was built in 1740 by Gaudot, an architect of the school of Rome, from the remains of an earlier 16th century château. In the 19th century, it was used as courier relay station (between Versailles and Beauvais) and stabled a hundred horses. The château was painted by Vincent van Gogh, who is buried nearby.

The chateau comprises two wings, plus a number of outbuildings. It has 30 rooms, a swimming pool and a tennis court and is set in 17,000 hectares of parkland. An octagonal stone drinking trough in the courtyard is a protected historical monument.

The composer Michel Magne purchased the chateau in 1962. He was best known for having been nominated in 1962 by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for Best Music, Scoring of Music, Adaptation or Treatment for Gigot. He converted the building into a residential recording studio after a fire devastated its left wing in 1969. The musician, director and sound engineer Laurent Thibault took over management of the studio in June 1974.

The Grateful Dead were there on 21 June 1971. Jerry Garcia tells the story:

We went over there to do a big festival, a free festival they were gonna have, but the festival was rained out. It flooded. We stayed at this little chateau which is owned by a film score composer who has a 16-track recording studio built into the chateau, and this is a chateau that Chopin once lived in; really old, just delightful, out in the country near the town of Auvers-sur-Oise, which is where Vincent van Gogh is buried.

We were there with nothing to do: France, a 16-track recording studio upstairs, all our gear, ready to play, and nothing to do. So, we decided to play at the chateau itself, out in the back, in the grass, with a swimming pool, just play into the hills. We didn't even play to hippies, we played to a handful of townspeople in Auvers. We played and the people came — the chief of police, the fire department, just everybody. It was an event and everybody just had a hell of a time — got drunk, fell in the pool. It was great.

...
Wikipedia