CASTLE OF BONNELLES
Third château built on this site, in the Louis XIII style. Former home of the famous Duchesse d'Uzès and her hunting parties.
At the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries, the La Villeneuve family built their first château on this site. Largely destroyed by fire in 1724, it was rebuilt in 1769, and its grounds were endowed with a number of classical fabriques. Unfortunately, the new château was destroyed during the French Revolution. In 1849, at the request of Géraud-Emmanuel de Crussol, Duke of Uzès, architects Joseph-Antoine Froelicher and Clément Parent restored the site to its former glory by building a third château, this time in the Louis XIII style. The Duke made it his country residence. Between 1867 and 1933, the château enjoyed its heyday, with Anne de Rochechouart de Mortemart, Duchess of Uzès, making it her favorite place to stay. She organized sumptuous hound hunts here, and brought the village of Bonnelles to life by employing almost half of its inhabitants. The estate, now known as the "Château de la duchesse d'Uzès", contains the remnants of the Parc à fabriques and a few other reminders of her monuments: a mosque, a Chinese pavilion and a canardière - a kind of small octagonal brick pavilion with loopholes and covered in straw. In 2018, it was bought by a Luxembourg company, before a fire destroyed part of the roof. Listed as a Monument Historique since 2010, the building is to be renovated and converted into housing, without altering its exterior appearance.
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