The Château de Rambouillet, which is the summer residence of the Presidents of France, is located in the town of Rambouillet, Yvelines department, France, 50 km (30 miles) southwest of Paris. During the French Revolution of 1789, the domain of Rambouillet became bien national, the castle was emptied of its furnishings, the gardens and surrounded park neglected.
The château de Rambouillet continues to be used as a venue for bilateral summits and, in February 1999, was host to the negotiations on Kosovo. The château was originally a fortified manor dating back to 1368 and, although amputated of one of its sides at the time of Napoléon I, it still retains its pentagonal bastioned footprint.
Like the Hôtel de Rambouillet in Paris, the château was owned by Charles d’Angennes, the marquis de Rambouillet during the reign of Louis XIII. Avenues led directly from the park of the castle into the adjacent game-rich forest. More than 200 square kilometres of forest remain, the remnant of the forest of Yvelines.
In 1783, the château became the private property of king Louis XVI, who bought it from his cousin the duc de Penthièvre as an extension of his hunting grounds. However, to induce his wife to like his new acquisition, Louis XVI commissioned in great secret the construction of the famous Laiterie de la Reine, (the Queen’s dairy), where the buckets were of Sèvres porcelain, painted and grained to imitate wood, and the presiding nymph was a marble Amalthea, with the goat that nurtured Jupiter, sculpted by Pierre Julien. A little salon was attached to the dairy itself, with chairs supplied by Georges Jacob in 1787 that had straight, tapering stop-fluted legs.
During the reign of Napoléon I, Rambouillet was included in his liste civile (list of government-owned property at the disposal of the head of state). The emperor came several times to Rambouillet, the last being on the night of June 29 to 30, 1815, on his way to exile to Saint Helena. Among the reminders of Napoléon are the Pompeian style bathroom with its small bathtub and the exquisite balcony built to link the emperor’s apartment to that of his second wife, the empress Marie-Louise. Another reminder of Napoléon was the splendid Allée de Cyprès chauves de Louisiane, a double-lined bald cypress (Taxodium distichum) avenue.
After the fall of Napoléon III in 1870, which saw the beginning of the French Third Republic, the domain of Rambouillet was leased from 1870 to 1883 to the duc de la Trémoille. In February 1896, Rambouillet received a visit from President Félix Faure who had decided to spend his summers there. Since then, Rambouillet has become the summer residence of Presidents of the Republic, who entertain, and used to invite to hunting parties many foreign dignitaries, princes and heads of state. As a part-time residence of the French president, it is sometimes referred to as the Palace of Rambouillet.
In November 1975, the first “G6″ summit was organized in the château by French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing for the heads of the world’s leading industrialized countries. Attending were: Gerald Ford, United States, Harold Wilson, United Kingdom, Aldo Moro, Italy, Takeo Miki, Japan, and Helmut Schmidt, Germany.
On December 26, 1999, a hurricane hit the northern half of France, wreaking havoc to forests, parks and buildings. The forest of Rambouillet lost hundreds of thousands of trees, and among the over five thousand downed trees in the park of Rambouillet, was the handsome Allée de Cyprès chauves de Louisiane, the bald cypress avenue planted in 1810.
At the time of the Bourbon Restoration, Rambouillet was also included in the liste civile of the new kings, and it is there that, on August 2, 1830, Charles X signed his abdication in favor of his son, the duc d’Angoulême who, twenty minutes later, signed his own abdication in favor of his nephew, the nine year old duc de Bordeaux. Fifteen years after Napoléon I, Charles X’s road to exile started also in Rambouillet.
From 1830 to 1848, the domain of Rambouillet, which had belonged to his grandfather, the duc de Penthièvre, was not included in the liste civile of Louis-Philippe I, King of the French; however, the emperor (1852-1870) Napoléon III requested its inclusion in his.
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