VICTOR HUGO'S LITERARY HOUSE

This beautiful mansion, surrounded by greenery, belonged to Bertin at Bertin, the Elder, director of the Journal of Debates. He stood there from 1815 to 1841, a fine literary salon that attracted Chateaubriand, Berlioz, Liszt, Ingres or Hugo. It is the latter who is now dedicated to the places. The collection in question has over 4 500 pieces: books, engravings, photographs, letters, manuscripts and chips (papers on which the writer noted his ideas). The circumstances in which the man of letters was brought to stay in this place are romance. In 1834, Victor Hugo is looking for a house to spend the summer with family… and with the one who has been his mistress for a year and a half and who will stay for half a century: Juliette Drouet. It finds an ideal site: Château des Roches, between Bièvres and Jouy-en-Josas. Around the house, a 10 ha area borders the Bièvre with its lake and park. The writer thus installs his family and, 4 km away, rents a room for Juliet in the hamlet of Metz. Victor Hugo wrote the famous poem «Sad D».