Château de Ferrières: A Neo-Renaissance Rothschild Château in France
Site at a Glance
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- Modern
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- Modern
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- Domestic
- Remains
- Castle
On this page7 sections
History
Château de Ferrières is a Neo-Renaissance château in Ferrières-en-Brie, France, built between 1855 and 1859 for Baron James de Rothschild by the English architect Joseph Paxton. Its design drew on Italian Renaissance architecture and was inspired by Mentmore Towers in Buckinghamshire, which Paxton had built for James’s nephew, Mayer Amschel de Rothschild. James is reputed to have asked for a version twice the size.
The Ferrières estate and construction
James de Rothschild acquired the Ferrières estate in 1829 from the heirs of Joseph Fouché, Duke of Otranto and a minister under Napoleon. Fouché had bought the domains of Ferrières and Pontcarré from the state in 1801. The property already contained a small castle, and successive acquisitions enlarged the estate to about 7,880 acres, or approximately 3,189 hectares.
The new château was inaugurated on 16 December 1862 at a gala attended by Napoleon III, emperor of the French from 1852 to 1870, and Achille Fould. Ownership then passed through the male line by primogeniture, an inheritance principle giving preference to the first-born, traditionally male, heir.
War, occupation, and relief work
During the Franco-Prussian War, the conflict between France and Prussia that led to the establishment of the German Empire, German forces seized Ferrières during the siege of Paris. Wilhelm I, Helmuth von Moltke, and Otto von Bismarck stayed at the château. On 19 and 20 September 1870, Bismarck met Jules Favre, foreign minister in the provisional government of the Third Republic. They discussed war aims, an armistice, and the possibility of elections. Bismarck required the cession of Alsace and Lorraine as a condition of peace.
German forces approached Paris during the First World War, and Rothschild children were moved to Ferrières because the château risked bombardment. During the Second World War, German troops occupied the property again and looted its art collections. After the Liberation in 1945, the Rothschild family lent much of the château to the OSE, a Jewish relief organization that cared for children. It accommodated children transferred from the Château du Masgelier and children from Buchenwald.
Rothschild restoration and later ownership
The château remained uninhabited until 1959, when Guy de Rothschild and his wife, Marie-Hélène de Zuylen van Nyevelt, began its refurbishment. They later held regular themed parties there, including the Surrealist Ball organized by Marie-Hélène de Rothschild on 12 December 1972 to mark the centenary of Marcel Proust’s birth.
In 1975, Guy and Marie-Hélène de Rothschild donated the château to the Chancellery of the University of Paris for charitable purposes. The property returned to their heirs in 2012 and was subsequently transferred to the commune of Ferrières-en-Brie. In July 2013, the commune entrusted it to a private company for the creation of the École Ferrières, which opened in October 2015 and provides higher and professional education in gastronomy, hospitality, and luxury. The property also contains the restaurants Le Baron and Le Chai.
The built and unbuilt parts of the Ferrières estate, including the English-style park in Pontcarré, have been protected as historic monuments since 26 September 2000, under a classification modified on 3 July 2003. The façades and roofs of the laundry building received separate registration on 5 September 1997.
Remains
Château de Ferrières is a large Neo-Renaissance building arranged around a central patio and marked by square towers at its four corners. Broad terraces face an English-style park of about 125 hectares. The park extends from Ferrières-en-Brie into the commune of Pontcarré, within an estate that included approximately 30 square kilometres of forest and adjoined the former Rothschild property of Armainvilliers.
Patio, circulation, and principal interiors
The central patio has a glazed roof measuring approximately 37 by 18 metres. Designed as an interior courtyard modeled on an Italian piazza, it has four monumental openings leading into different parts of the château. Behind the Neo-Renaissance façades, the main staircase replicates Joseph Paxton’s staircase in the Crystal Palace, the vast iron-and-glass building created for the 1851 Great Exhibition in London.
The apartments comprised 28 suites and had central heating and hot and cold running water from the outset. Alongside the Rothschild family’s private apartments, the château contained 80 guest rooms or suites. The building originally had no kitchen. A subterranean passage, about 60 metres long, connected the basement with a neighboring house at the northeastern edge of the estate, where the cooking ranges and kitchen equipment were installed. Rails in the passage carried dishes on small carts. The passage was closed during the Second World War and rehabilitated in 2014.
Sculpture, collections, and decoration
Charles Henri Joseph Cordier created the atlantes and caryatids supporting the interior columns. Atlantes are sculpted male figures used instead of columns, while caryatids are their female counterparts. Eugène Lami supervised the decorative painting.
The interiors include a large library that held more than 8,000 volumes, galleries with tapestries depicting the Triumphs, black-and-white marble sculptures, and paintings associated with artists including Velázquez, Rubens, Guido Reni, and Rembrandt. Gilding, ornament covered with a thin layer of gold or gold-colored material, appears on furniture, picture frames, stucco decoration, tapestries, and Rothschild emblems.
James de Rothschild assembled a substantial art collection, with statues decorating several rooms. Works associated with Alexandre Falguière and the eighteenth-century Italian sculptor Antonio Corradini were present, while James’s son later added works by René de Saint-Marceaux.
