Château de Méréville

Château de Méréville
Location within France
General information
Architectural style	Renaissance
Classification	Monument historique
Town or city	Méréville, Essonne
Country	France
Coordinates	48°19′11″N 2°5′27″E / 48.31972°N 2.09083°E / 48.31972; 2.09083
Construction started	1768
Completed	1794
Client	Jean-Joseph de Laborde
Design and construction
Architect	Jean-Benoît-Vincent Barré

The Château de Méréville is a chateau in Méréville in the valley of the Juine, France. It is the rival of the Désert de Retz as two of the most extensive Landscape Gardens provided with follies and picturesque features — parcs à fabriques — made in the late eighteenth century. Both are early examples of the romantic French Landscape Garden — jardin a l'anglaise — an interpretation of the English garden style that was replacing the Garden à la française. the Château de Méréville and garden park survives, partially dismantled.

The château was first built as a medieval fortress, and then rebuilt on the medieval buildings' remains in 1768 for the conseiller du roi Jean Delpech. The 1768 phase was provided with modest formal gardens formed as regular parterres

The château and its park in the French gardening style were bought in 1784 as the last of his country houses by the financier Jean-Joseph de Laborde, one of the richest financiers of the Ancien Régime, after his neighbours gave him the chance to do so. On this marshy land he decided to rebuild the château and create a large landscape park to his own taste. To this end he commissioned major artists such as Bélanger (famous in this decade for having constructed Bagatelle in only two months for the comte d'Artois), the famous cabinetmaker Leleu, the sculptor Augustin Pajou and the painter Claude Joseph Vernet.

In 1786, after the new pont des roches (a two-level bridge over the Juine) subsided, and Bélanger's plans were threatening to prove too expensive even for the marquis (he habitually spent without keeping count of spending, which as a sensible administrator the marquis could not accept). Bélanger was thus sacked as chief architect in May that year and replaced by Hubert Robert (who had left the prestigious French School in Rome and was already known as the ruins-painter or "Robert-les-ruines"), though Bélanger remained onsite for the construction of the circular temple of filial piety (built in honour of the marquis' daughter Natalie, containing a marble bust of her by Augustin Pajou).