Inside, the apartment of "Madame", Princess Henrietta of England, in the left wing was decorated by Jean Nocret in 1660, and the 45-metre Galerie d'Apollon, which occupied the whole of the right wing, was decorated with myths of Apollo by Pierre Mignard (finished in 1680). The entrance avenue, bordered by dependencies, some of which survive, arrived on an angle from the bridge. To the rear, a long orangery formed a wing that prolonged the right wing of the court. The château as it was reconstructed for Monsieur took the form of a "U" open to the east, towards the Seine, with the Gondi château, which had faced south, integrated into its left wing. The works were designed and constructed by his architect Antoine Le Pautre, who built the wings in 1677. Monsieur was engaged in building operations at Saint-Cloud until his death in 1701. It appears that Mazarin pressed the sale, contributing to a policy of building a network of royal châteaux to the west of Paris and relieving the excessively enriched Hervart from the fate of Nicolas Fouquet, whose fête at Vaux-le-Vicomte precipitated his fall and imprisonment. On 25 October, Monsieur bought the château and its grounds for 240,000 livres. On 8 October 1658, Hervart organised a sumptuous feast at Saint-Cloud in honour of the young Louis XIV, his brother, "Monsieur", Philippe of France, Duke of Orléans, their mother Anne of Austria and Cardinal Mazarin.
#St. cloud gardens series
Its gardens descended in a series of terraces to the Seine, with fountains at each level. It was built in the Italian style, with an invisibly flat roof and frescoed façades. Garden details that seem to be of this phase of Saint-Cloud were drawn by Israël Silvestre. He built a grande cascade (not the present one) in the park. He enlarged the park to 12 hectares and did considerable rebuilding. The latter sold the property in 1655 to Barthélemy Hervart, a banker of German extraction who was intendant then surintendant des finances. His embellishment notably included gardens by Thomas Francine.Īfter the death of Jean-François de Gondi in 1654, the château was inherited by Philippe-Emmanuel de Gondi and then by his nephew Henri de Gondi, known as the Duke of Retz. The château was bought back by Jean-François de Gondi, archbishop of Paris. In 1589 he was assassinated there by the monk Jacques Clément.Īfter the death of Jérôme de Gondi in 1604, his son Jean-Baptiste II de Gondi sold the château to Jean de Bueil, Comte de Sancerre, who died shortly afterward. Henry III of France installed himself in this house in order to conduct the siege of Paris during the Wars of Religion.
The main front faced south, with a wing that terminated in a pavilion affording a handsome view over the Seine River. In the 1570s, the Queen offered Jérôme de Gondi a dwelling at Saint-Cloud, the Hôtel d'Aulnay, which became the nucleus of the château with a right-angled wing that looked out on a terrace. The Gondis stemmed from a family of Florentine bankers established at Lyon in the first years of the 16th century, who had arrived at the court of France in 1543 in the train of Catherine de' Medici. The Hôtel d'Aulnay on the site was expanded into a château in the 16th century by the Gondi banking family.
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