Living Museum of the Horse

The Living Museum of the Horse (French: Musée Vivant du Cheval) is a museum in Chantilly, France dedicated to equine art and culture. It is housed in the Great Stables (Grandes Écuries) of the Château de Chantilly, about 40 km (25 mi) north of Paris.

The Great Stables were built in 1719, on the orders of Louis Henri, duke of Bourbon, Prince of Condé, who believed that he would be reincarnated as a horse. He asked the architect, Jean Aubert, to build stables that would be suitable to house a horse of his rank. The resulting 186 m long stables are considered a masterpiece of 18th century architecture. The stables could house 240 horses and up to five hundred hounds.

In 1830, Henri d'Orléans, duke of Aumale, the fourth son of King Louis-Philippe, inherited the château from his uncle, the Duc de Bourbon. In 1886, Henri bequeathed the château, the stables, the racecourse, and almost 8 km² of forest land to the Institut de France, with the stipulation that it should be preserved as it was.

Riding master Yves Bienaimé had begun his career in 1959, in the riding school housed in the stables. Twenty years later, he was struck by the state of neglect of the still-impressive building. He decided he would do what he could to bring back some of the former glory of the stables. On 6 June 1982, after four years of negotiations with the Institut over the concession, Yves and Annabel Bienaimé opened the museum to the public. Yves Bienaimé discovered Marine Oussedik's art in Equus magazine. He then asked her for works to be permanently displayed in two rooms of the museum. The first room was dedicated to Arabian horses in Arabian proverbs (in 1993) and the second one (in 1995) to the horse shows as performed within the Museum.

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