BLACKBOOK CLASSIC OXXXXXXXXXX REVIVAL Past Perfect After a six-year redo by Jacques Garcia, the 17th-century Château de Villette is fit for a modern-day marquis. ALICE CAVANAGH reports Château de Villette’s garden facade illustrates the signature French style of symmetry with restrained embellishments If you’re a Francophile like me, then it’s likely you have a fascination with the storybook French château. Temples of symmetry and opulence, they spoon-feed the imagination with glamorous images of a bygone era, when every part of aristocratic life was guided by aesthetic beauty above all else – no wonder the revolutionaries were so incensed. Case in point is the 17th-century Château de Villette outside Paris, one of France’s most stately properties, which has recently been restored and is the subject of a new coffee-table tome, Château de Villette: The Splendor of French Décor (Flammarion). Originally designed by architect François Mansart and finished by his great-nephew Jules Hardouin-Mansart, who oversaw the work at Versailles for Louis XIV, the Château de Villette was once the country estate of the Marquis and Marquise de Condorcet. The couple were leading intellectuals of the 18th century who hosted the likes of Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine in their cosmopolitan Paris salon. It was the latter epoch – considered the heyday of the estate – that served as a touchstone for the new owners, Sergei and Irina Bogdanov. A Luxembourg-based Russian couple with a PHOTO BRUNO EHRS/CHÂTEAU DE VILLETTE, FLAMMARION 2018 36 CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM
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