Château du Raincy

The Château du Raincy was constructed between 1643 and 1650 by Jacques Bordier, indendant des finances, on the site of a Benedectine priory on the road from Paris to Meaux, in the present-day commune of Le Raincy in the Seine-Saint-Denis department of France.

Louis Le Vau was put in charge of the design of the building. The gardens are traditionally ascribed to André Le Nôtre and the interior decoration to Charles Le Brun. This team of masters also worked on the châteaux at Vaux-le-Vicomte and Versailles.

Surrounded by five pavilions and a network of dry moats, the château du Raincy was at the heart of a private estate imbued with royal magnificence. The monumental stables could accommodate 200 horses. After Bordier added the adjacent territory of the seigneurie of Bondy to it, the park of 240 hectares was one of the most extensive in the vicinity of Paris.

Bordier's expenses amounted to the exorbitant sum of 4,500,000 livres, swallowing up his fortune. After Bordier's death in 1660, his son and heir, Hilaire, was constrained to sell the property to Princess Palatine, Anna Maria Gonzaga in 1663. In November 1664 Molière's troupe was commanded to perform at Le Raincy by her son-in-law, the prince de Condé. After her death, in 1684, the estate passed to her daughter, Anne Henriette of Bavaria (1648–1723). Ten years later, Anne's husband, prince Henri Jules de Bourbon-Condé, ceded the property to Louis Sanguin, marquis du Livry, premier maître d'hôtel du Roi et capitaine des chasses; joining the domain to his of Livry, the house became known as the château de Livry.

In 1769, the château was purchased by Louis Philippe d'Orléans, who had both the garden and interiors upgraded. His heir, Philippe-Égalité, engaged the Scottish gardener Thomas Blaikie to replace the formal gardens with a more natural landscape, one of the first jardins à l'anglaise in France. The park was dotted with numerous follies, including an "old tower", a "farm", a decorative kennel, an hermitage, and the celebrated Maisons Russes, scored to imitate Russian isbas (log houses). One was open to visitors as the "caffé Restorateur du Reinci dans le goût Russe" as a contemporary engraving labels it; To add to the ambience of its parc à l'anglaise, the waiters spoke English.

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