Maison de Lamartine: Alphonse de Lamartine’s Former Residence
Site at a Glance
- Popularity
- Medium
- Country
- France
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- Eras represented
- Early Modern
- Civilizations
- French
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- House
On this page6 sections
History
Maison de Lamartine is a residence in France associated with Milly and the French poet and political figure Alphonse de Lamartine. Built in 1705, it was an eighteenth-century bourgeois house. Lamartine’s childhood and later writing connected it closely with Milly, although he was not born there.
Childhood and literary attachment
Lamartine lived in the house from 1794 to 1801, arriving when he was four years old. After occasional visits, he returned during the Restoration, the period when the Bourbon monarchy came back to power after Napoleon’s fall. His poetry about Milly helped make the place as well known as Saint-Point and Monceau, his principal other residences.
In 1826, when his father was considering selling the house, Lamartine urged him to keep it. He wrote Milly, or the Native Land, later included in Poetic and Religious Harmonies, expressing his attachment to the place.
Sale and protection
Financial pressure led Lamartine to sell the house in 1860 for 500,000 francs to M. Mazoyer of Cluny. Mazoyer sold it to the Sornay family a few months later. Lamartine described leaving as surrendering “the marrow of my bones” and said he took with him traces of his mother and relics of his youth. The house received French Historic Monument protection in 1979.
Remains
The residence
The house has a simple, square plan, with a ground floor reached by a short flight of steps and a single upper storey with three windows. Greenery covers the façade, while the exterior is described as unaltered. Inside, the arrangement of rooms remains as it was in Lamartine’s time.
Estate and memorial
The house stood at the center of a vineyard estate of about 50 hectares, with land across Milly, Berzé-la-Ville, and Saint-Sorlin, now La Roche-Vineuse. A bust of Lamartine stands in front of Milly-Lamartine’s town hall. Its inscription recalls his attachment to Milly: “I left my heart there.”
