Inside a 400-Year-Old Family Château Redecorated by Interior Designer Jacques Garcia

[00:00:00]Welcome to the Chateau de Breteuil.

[00:00:02]It was built between 1604 and 1610 under the reign of King Louis the 13th, and it has always stayed in my family since then.

[00:00:14]The chateau today has been converted into a museum, but it's also a family home.

[00:00:20]And we take here the history of France and the history of my family and within my ancestors.

[00:00:29]You meet also people from England, people from the US.

[00:00:34]And so we are a very international family.

[00:00:37]My great grandmother was American and I also I had some British ancestors.

[00:00:44]The news of the chateau again, it has four centuries, but my wife and I, we just took over from my father a year ago.

[00:00:52]So it's very new.

[00:00:53]And we recently redecorated some of the rooms with the help of the very famous French decorator Jacques Garcia.

[00:01:01]And this is what we see in a minute.

[00:01:04]We are 1 hour drive from Paris, southwest, in the heart of what we call the Vallée de Chevreuse, which is an exquisite place to come and visit because it's surrounded by trees and by nature.

[00:01:20]And we're very fortunate to be located in such a nice area.

[00:01:25]It doesn't look at all that we are so close from Paris.

[00:01:29]And so the architecture of the chateau is typical Louis the 13th.

[00:01:34]It's bricks and stone, and the chateau was built at the beginning of the 17th century, but it went through a lot of renovation over time, and especially at the end of the 19th century.

[00:01:47]At that time, it was my great grandfather, Henri de Breteuil, who was married to an American woman.

[00:01:55]She was very rich.

[00:01:56]He spent the money of her wife making his chateau even more beautiful and also creating very nice gardens, as we called Jardin à la francaise.

[00:02:07]And so this is what we can enjoy today.

[00:02:11]So please come in.

[00:02:15]So welcome to the Portrait Gallery where you find also my little dog called Newton.

[00:02:22]And here in this portrait gallery we show my most famous ancestors, who were ministers to the last kings of France.

[00:02:30]So we have Louis de Breteuil who was Minister of Finance, Francois Victor, Minister of war, and Louis Auguste, who was Home Secretary.

[00:02:41]He was one of very close advisers to Louis the 16th and Marie-Antoinette.

[00:02:47]And in this room you find two paintings of Louis the 16th, which were given by the king to my ancestor, Louis-Auguste de Breteuil.

[00:02:57]So now we move forward and we go to the 18th century, where you will see our latest room, which was just redecorated by Jacques Garcia.

[00:03:09]And I leave my wife commenting you this new project.

[00:03:14]Welcome in this very 18th century place where I just wanted to celebrate the 18th century within the portrait gallery, which is going on.

[00:03:27]We have the daughters of Louis XV and Louis XV is there just welcoming us.

[00:03:35]He's five years old and he's becoming the king after the death of Louis XIV.

[00:03:43]This is a very 18th century.

[00:03:45]Within all the tapestries that you see from the Gobelins, we have the Four Seasons tapestries, within also the carpets from Aubusson and within, of course, this remarkable Bernard, Fables de la Fontaine, the tales of La Fontaine, embroidered in this very beautiful furniture.

[00:04:08]This furniture has been in the family from the beginning and has been made for the place, as well as these Chinese style lacquer furniture, which is/was very precious, in the 18th century.

[00:04:24]It was a pleasure of billionaires because the furniture was made in France and then lacquered in China, which was very costly.

[00:04:37]In the 19th century, it became less fashionable.

[00:04:40]So all the lacquer went up, in the in the rooms and we'll find them later.

[00:04:46]So you'll see also the remarkable pendulum, which is nice from both sides and indicates, of course, time, and months and days.

[00:05:00]We also evocate Emilie de Breteuil.

[00:05:03]Emilie de Breteuil who was born Breteuil and was Marquise du Chatelet.

[00:05:07]She was also the mistress of Voltaire.

[00:05:09]But most of it she was a very important scientist because she translated Newton into French.

[00:05:18]And she was very, very clever, had a man education.

[00:05:24]We are very, very proud to have her in our family.

[00:05:28]That's why our little dogs is called Newton of course.

[00:05:32]Another atmosphere.

[00:05:33]We are here in the living room of course.

[00:05:36]The second empire, the second Empire style living room.

[00:05:41]Jacques Garcia made all decoration from this, using our furniture.

[00:05:48]And in this century and this particular period is very interesting because it's you know, you have a very dark atmosphere where the golden pictures take all their places.

[00:06:00]And It's a living room where the family is really is evocated.

[00:06:08]Within the portraits of different members of the families.

[00:06:12]But also the furniture is very welcoming and warm, symbolizing these periods of comfort, you know, of when aristocracy is marrying very rich, inheritance.

[00:06:30]And that's what the Breteuil did.

[00:06:32]It's the reign of objects you've a lot of objects everywhere.

[00:06:37]And it's also a period where it's, you know, you have furniture from the 19th century, but also from the 18th century.

[00:06:46]You have also this 17th century bronze, the "coffre" Momoyama japanese furniture from the 17th century, and the Sevres, which was made for the Breteuil in the 19th century.

[00:07:02]So you see all the comfort that is coming at this period.

[00:07:07]And you want to just read "la recherche du temps perdu" the whole time here.

[00:07:13]And yeah that's a place where people and visitors say they feel like at home.

[00:07:19]And they just want to stay here.

[00:07:22]So at a time where the objects were really important, we liked very much this whisky distributors, you know.

[00:07:31]Um, so it's very correct, you know, you cannot drink too much with that.

[00:07:38]We also have the portraits of Marcellite Garner, the American who married Henri de Breteuil.

[00:07:45]After he lost his first wife, that he loved, Constance de Castelbajac was a very, very beautiful woman.

[00:07:53]But she died of tuberculosis.

[00:07:55]And then he married Marcellite, which was also an orphan with her three other sisters, and they came up from America to Pau (South of France), where the American girls, very rich American girls, were offered to marriage to aristocracy and to people looking for wealth and offering titles, which happens with Marcellite when she married Henri de Breteuil.

[00:08:26]So here we are in the gardens.

[00:08:29]We have beautiful gardens at Breteuil because... my great grandfather, when he inherited the house, he worked with the two most famous gardeners of his time, Henri and Achille Duchêne.

[00:08:46]And they created this beautiful jardin à la francaise or French gardens, very strict, which are based on the works of André Le Nôtre, who was the gardener of Versailles.

[00:08:59]So after the jardin à la francaise, the French garden, we are here in the English gardens, which is called the Princess Garden.

[00:09:08]After the name and the memory of the Prince of Wales, Edward the seventh and Edward the Eighth, who came to Breteuil.

[00:09:17]And we are very fortunate, because, as you can see, this is cherry blossom time in this garden.

[00:09:24]So we enjoy this beautiful flowers from the cherry trees.

[00:09:29]I want really to invite you to come and visit us at Breteuil.

[00:09:34]We are open to the public all year round, one hour from Paris, and we welcome about 140,000 visitors per year.

[00:09:44]You can also organise weddings or, you know, private events, dinners, receptions and I really hope that you will come in the future to visit Pauline and I.