Château de Chantilly in Paris

The Château de Chantilly is a mansion located in the town of Chantilly, France, built by Pierre Chambiges in 1528–1531 for Constable Anne de Montmorency. The original estate was built in 1484. It comprises two attached buildings; the Grand Château, which was destroyed during the French Revolution and the Petit Château, which was built around 1560. In 1632, the Grand Condé inherited the estate from his mother, a Montmorency. The Grand Château was restored by Condé and completely rebuilt between 1875 and 1881 by Henri d'Orléans, duc d'Aumale, to the designs of Honore Daumet.

The Chantilly, Renaissance-style castle, with its moat, looks as if it came out of a fairy tale. The Grand Château houses the Musée Condé, a museum which showcases a wax head of King Henri IV, the pink Condé diamond, Raphael’s 'Virgin of Loreto', Piero di Cosimo’s Portrait of 'Simonetta Vespucci', works by Botticelli, Poussin and Watteau, as well as Renaissance portraits by the Clouet father and son. The Petit Château houses a library which contains over 700 manuscripts and 12,000 volumes of books. The ‘living museum’, Musée Vivant du Cheval, built by the Prince of Condé, who thought he would be reincarnated as a horse, is devoted to horses of the 18th-century. The 186-metre long stables, or Grandes Ecuries (Great Stables) hold 240 horses and 400 hounds. The château’s park, which comprises a canal, gardens, pools and lawns, was designed by a landscape artist André Le Nôtre. It also contains an English garden with cascade and pavilion buildings.

In 1659, Molière’s play 'Les Précieuses ridicules' held its first performance in the château. From Madame de Sévigné notes on the time when king Louis XIV visited the château in 1671, we know that the maître d'hôtel committed suicide when he feared the king’s dinner would be served late. The château’s entire estate was taken by the Orléans family between 1853 and 1872, and afterwards owned by an English bank. Finally, in the 1890s, the Duc d'Aumale donated the property to the Institut de France. During the French Revolution, the château became a prison, and in 1799 it was partly demolished. The art collections of the museum include works by the Italian Renaissance painter Raphael (1483–1520) and portraits by the 16th-century court painters Jean and François Clouet.

Influenced by the Great Stables, a racec ourse was inaugurated in 1834. In Chantilly, the French Jockey Club conducts races each year in June. Chantilly is one of France’s best horse-training centres. Many visitors to Château de Chantilly may not know that the château and Great Stables were featured in the James Bond movie 'A View to a Kill'. Moreover, every two years, the Nuits de Feu international fireworks competition is held in the château’s garden.