Chateau Veux-le-Vicomte

in #travelfeed5 years ago

20191130_131735.jpg

This past weekend my wife and I had the pleasure of visiting the Chateau Veux-le-Vicomte, a French palace located just outside of Paris in the small town of Maincy France.

The estate, which was opened to the public in 1967, is the largest privately owned chateau in the country.

20191130_114832.jpg

20191130_134919.jpg

The tour of the chateau starts in the stables which houses an assortment of horse drawn carriages, some of which are larger then I would have ever expected them to be. Many were also quite extravagant with their shiny trim and a thickly lacquered paint job. They actually reminded me of 150 year old concept car show. I regret not taking any photos, but we were trying to get ahead of a busload of tourist, so regretfully we kind of rushed through a few sections.

20191130_115040.jpg

I did however manage to take a shot of my wife with the sheep that are kept on the property. She always gravitates to sheep for some reason. But who doesnt love a good sheep, or in this case a ram?

20191130_115105.jpg

Something else that I appreciate in a castle is a good mote. This one comes complete with a draw bridge located at the back of the chateau and some fish. I assume that they are a type of koi fish.

20191130_115342.jpg

20191130_115432.jpg

This is a particularly neat time to visit the palace as well, because each year it shuts its doors for a month or so to prepare for the holiday season. The rooms and much of the grounds were decorated quite nicely for the Christmas.

received_693817071142741.jpeg

20191130_121900.jpg

The decorations even extended into the kitchen that are located in the basement of the chateau. I personally found this section quite interesting because it's the first castle kitchen I've seen so far.

received_537030463805263.jpeg

Many of the rooms also had their fireplaces lit as well, which not only provided warmth and light, but also really added to the Christmas ambiance of the estate. It was pretty neat to see the fires in use, as again, I've never actually seen a castle fireplace in use. Note: the painting above the fireplace is of Nicholas Fouquet (more on him later).

20191130_120730.jpg

Though the christmas decorations did add a little something extra to the experience, I actually found that learning about the estates history was far more facinating. Veux has a really interesting story as part of its history and I will share it in the next section of this article.

Brief History


20191130_131838.jpg

The chateau was built between 1658-1661 by the 26 year old Nicholas Fouquet. During the construction, Fouquet was a member of parliament and acted as Louis XIV's superintendent of finances. Not a bad gig for a 26 year old.

20191130_122931.jpg

In order to satisfy his grand ambition for the project and obtain the necessary land for its completion, Fouquet purchased three small villages and had them destroyed to make room for his future estate.

20191130_132430.jpg

Not to worry though, Fouquet made it up to the villagers who were displaced from their homes and lands by employing them at his chateau. There they worked in his home and on the grounds maintaining the lavishly decorated gardens located on the property. It is said that the estate actually employed around 18 thousand employees at its peak. Where does one get that kind of money?

20191130_123517.jpg

Fouquet was a patron of the arts and in order to impress King Louis the 14th he had his palace luxuriously decorated with a wide assortment of paintings, tapestries and sculptures. He even dedicated a portion of the palace to the King himself. To unveil his new home, Fouquet threw an extravagant party in the Kings honor.

20191130_131850.jpg

Unfortunately though for Fouquet, instead of impressing the King he actually made him jealous. Why should the countries finance minister have a nicer home then the king himself?

20191130_124136.jpg

These acts, which may have been a genuine sign of affection towards the king or perhaps a sign of youthful arrogance or naivety, ended up leading to Fouquets downfall in the end.

Jean-Baptiste Colbert plotted against Fouquet and convinced the King that the palace was constructed using misappropriated public funds.

Believing the word of Colbert, the king had Fouquet arrested and imprisoned. He also sent Fouquets wife and son to exile. Soon after, Colbert himself became the minister of finances for France.

All of this took place within only a few years of when the chateau was completed.

20191130_124153.jpg

Fouquets wife eventually did regain possession of the Veux property and she was able to retired there with her son. However, most of the artwork contained within the chateau, along with all of its statues, tapestries and even the orange trees from the gardens, were confiscated or bought by Louis XIV. He needed them to decorate his own Palace - Versailles, which was designed and construction shortly after Fouquets imprisonment by the same architects and artists that had designed and built the Chateau Veux-le-Vicomte.

Quick Facts


20191130_122030.jpg

Throughout its recent history the chateau has been featured in several film productions, including the 1998 Hollywood blockbuster starring Leonardo Decaprio "The Man in the Iron Mask."

20191130_124852.jpg

The chateau boasts 33 hectares of gardens and 20 working pools.

20191130_131201.jpg

The fountains within the garden still work in the same manner in which they were originally designed, by gravity.

20191130_131505.jpg

The chateau's estate employs at least 70 people who work in the building itself, the gardens, restaurant, gift shop, and whom run the horse drawn carriages that take people around the property for an additional 5 euros.

The estate generates an annual revenue of approximately 8 million Euro and has over 300 thousand visitors per year.

Overall the location was one of my favourite places that my wife and I have visited in France and would highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys visiting castles or taking in a countries history.

20191130_132936.jpg

Before heading out my wife and I sat in some lawn chairs and enjoyed a coffee that we bought in the little canteen located on the property. We both agreed that it was a pretty cool spot for a cafe. No one could complain about the view.

20191130_134830.jpg

Thanks for Reading

Sort:  

Congratulations! Your high-quality travel content was selected by @travelfeed curator @elsaenroute and earned you a reward, in form of an upvote and a resteem. Your work really stands out! Your article now has a chance to get featured under the appropriate daily topic on our TravelFeed blog.
Thank you for being part of the TravelFeed community!

Did you know that you get larger upvotes when posting through TravelFeed.io? Also, thanks to the travel writing contest by @invisusmundi you can now earn up to 100 STEEM on top of the post rewards when posting through our new platform TravelFeed.io! Read the contest announcement for more information on how to participate.

We are continuously working on improving TravelFeed, recently we presented at SteemFest⁴, published our Android app and launched our Steem witness.

Please consider voting for us as a witness. If you're not sure how to do that, it's easy: Head over to our Support Us page and hit the witness voting button to vote with Steem Keychain, or Steemconnect if you are not a Keychain user. Alternatively, use this Steemconnect link or head over to the Steemit Wallet and enter travelfeed in the box.


Learn more about TravelFeed by clicking on the banner above and join our community on Discord.

Congratulations! Your high-quality travel content was selected by @travelfeed curator @elsaenroute and earned you a reward, in form of an upvote and a resteem. Your work really stands out! Your article now has a chance to get featured under the appropriate daily topic on our TravelFeed blog.
Thank you for being part of the TravelFeed community!

Did you know that you get larger upvotes when posting through TravelFeed.io? Also, thanks to the travel writing contest by @invisusmundi you can now earn up to 100 STEEM on top of the post rewards when posting through our new platform TravelFeed.io! Read the contest announcement for more information on how to participate.

We are continuously working on improving TravelFeed, recently we presented at SteemFest⁴, published our Android app and launched our Steem witness.

Please consider voting for us as a witness. If you're not sure how to do that, it's easy: Head over to our Support Us page and hit the witness voting button to vote with Steem Keychain, or Steemconnect if you are not a Keychain user. Alternatively, use this Steemconnect link or head over to the Steemit Wallet and enter travelfeed in the box.


Learn more about TravelFeed by clicking on the banner above and join our community on Discord.

Just awesome place to visit and wonderful shots.

This post has been appreciated and featured in daily quality content rewards. Keep up the good work.

Thank you. I appreciate the support

Posted using Partiko Android

This is a fantastic blog. I don't know what impressed me more...the kitchen or the fish in the moat. But I kept thinking as you described the displaced townspeople (lucky souls who lost their independence to become servants), that it's no wonder there was eventually a revolution. Mostly I wondered, why did it take another 130 years for the populace to become enraged?

I visited Paris in 2000 and stayed in Vincennes, where the Château de Vincennes is located. Although this was once a royal residence, it was not nearly as well turned out as Chateau Veux-le-Vicomte. And I can't remember that any other tourists were in evidence.

Yeah France has some real gems of interesting history, like most of Europe. I haven't been to vincennes yet but I'll add it to the list of places I should check out. It's always nice when you visit a site and you're the only ones there. That has happened to us on a few other excursions to some smaller towns.

Thanks for the comment!

Posted using Partiko Android

You got voted by @curationkiwi thanks to SK1920! This bot is managed by KiwiJuce3 and run by Rishi556, you can check both of them out there. To receive upvotes on your own posts, you need to join the Kiwi Co. Discord and go to the room named #CurationKiwi. Submit your post there using the command "!upvote (post link)" to receive upvotes on your post. CurationKiwi is currently supported by donations from users like you, so feel free to leave an upvote on our posts or comments to support us!
We have also recently added a new whitelist feature for those who would like to support CurationKiwi even more! If you would like to receive upvotes more than 2x greater than the normal upvote, all you need to do is delegate 50 SP to @CurationKiwi using this link.

You have received 5x upvotes from the members of @steemexplorers from your free link submission in our discord server. Steemexplorers is an initiative bringing information on various Steemit services and communities in a central discord to save you time and help you grow. It's free, it's easy, and it's here to help you in so many ways. Come by our discord to learn more! Link to Discord: https://discord.gg/6QrMCFq. Our team also offers an additional upvoting service called @givememonsters where you can presently trade in 1 to 10 DEC from the Steem Monsters game for up to $0.03 upvotes on ANY steemit posts. The vote purchasing value here is some of the best returns on your investments that you can find anywhere so come by and visit this service today!

Congratulations @leaky20! You have completed the following achievement on the Steem blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :

You published more than 200 posts. Your next target is to reach 250 posts.

You can view your badges on your Steem Board and compare to others on the Steem Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word STOP

To support your work, I also upvoted your post!

Vote for @Steemitboard as a witness to get one more award and increased upvotes!

This post has received a 3.13 % upvote from @drotto thanks to: @curationkiwi.

Coin Marketplace

STEEM 0.18
TRX 0.16
JST 0.029
BTC 77191.63
ETH 2961.40
USDT 1.00
SBD 2.63