Friday, June 7, 2019

Chateau de Chantilly - A Day’s Escape from Paris




By the time we arrived in the town of Chantilly it was mid-morning. The cloudy sky and cold breezes that blew down the rues of Paris had given way to glorious sunshine and frosted pastures in the Hauts-de-France department, “the North Pole of France” as the southerners, exaggeratedly, calls it.

Our destination was the Chateau de Chantilly and at the entrance gate of the vast domaine large patches of the pond were frozen and on the one or two isolated thawed spots, white swans and harlequin ducks paddled in search of food.


The train ride from Paris to Chantilly ran through the rather boring industrial north of Paris and beyond that, farmland, mostly unseen because most of the rolling hills were carved out to build a straight flat terrain for the train tracks to allow the regional train to pick up some form of speed. The few patches of landscape I could see through the dirty window looked forlorn under the grey sky. A landscape that did not looked forward to the winter ahead. Only as we neared Chantilly did the sun emerged from beyond the dissipating clouds.

 A portrait of Chantilly as it looked around 1741.

The chateau is an 800-year old outpost whose history is closely intertwined with French royals and one of the most distinguished and noble families in France, the Montmorency family. Today the statue of Anne de Montmorency on a horse, the 1st Duke of Montmorency, (the duke originally build the first castle around 1528) can be seen in front of the castle’s drawbridge. The original mansion was destroyed during the French Revolution and between 1875 and 1882, Henri d'Orléans, the Duke of Aumale, the fifth son of King Louis-Philippe I of France, rebuilt the chateau as we see it today. (For more information about the owners of the estate click in the link.)

Within the chateau is the Musée Condé, our main focus of the day. According to a little research I did it seems the museum’s art galleries are the second largest collection of antique paintings in France after that of the Louvre. Any museum compared to the Louvre is worth a visit!


The chateau’s second major feature is its stables, which houses the Musée de Cheval, the Museum for the Horse. The STABLES could well be the most spectacular stables in France and approaching the vast chateau complex from the west and coming upon the stables first, one could easily mistake the stables for the actual chateau. Lavish in design!

French aloofness?

Many have written or talked about the aloofness of the French, but thrice on our short visit to Paris we experienced the opposite. Twice at the Gare du Nord train station. First, when a man helped M with her baggage down the stairs, (we were temporarily separated while I was searching for a ticket kiosk and which I eventually found hidden behind a huge billboard.) The second event was when another Frenchman, seeing me struggling with the ATM not accepting my credit card for some reason (I have used the same card several times before at other ATMs) helped me getting train tickets by using his own card and then I paid him back in cash.  

The third time was when we arrived at the Chantilly train station, a 25-minute ride with a regional train north of Paris. There was no taxi available at the time and the bus service to the chateau, according to another bus driver at the bus terminus, was only to arrive an hour from our arrival. I was not willing to waste that amount of time! However, a young French gentleman and his girlfriend/wife who arrived on the same train as us were waiting for a hotel shuttle to pick them up. When the shuttle arrived he asked the driver if he could drop us off at the chateau. The driver graciously agreed and we were very grateful. Later in the morning, I notice the same couple was also visitors to the Musée Condé. Upon seeing them I took the opportunity to thank them again for their assistance.    

An Unchanged Layout

The Duke of Aumale, an ardent collector of art, old books and manuscripts, was the last private owner of the Chateau de Chantilly. In the large Gallery of Painting he hung his paintings of suit his own personal taste. In fact, the layout closely relates to the Duke’s personal history and the layout has not changed since he bequeathed the domaine to the Institute of France in 1886. On the left wall of the grand gallery the art works are mainly Italian, reminders of his mother's family background and his time traveling through Italy. On the opposite wall are works from France, relating to his father’s side of the family and his own illustrious career in the French military.

 The Gallery of Painting.


Got to have some family pics on the wall too!

In the Sanctuary, a small inner room for the castle, hangs the treasures of the Museum’s collection; two paintings by Renaissance painter, Raphael: The Virgin of the House of Orleans and The Three Graces, and 40 pages of the miniature illumination manuscript, The book of Hours of Etienne Chevalier by Jean Fouquet. 


In the Reading Room, with its warm wood atmosphere, in one corner, kept in a locked glass cabinet I was thrilled to discover the Complete Works of François de Malherbe (1555 – 1628), a possible ancestor of mine on my mother’s side. Being an amateur genealogist for the past 15 years (my mother’s maiden name is Malherbe) and I having traced the Malherbes back to 1066 AD when one of them accompanied William, the Conqueror, as a knight, to conquer England, this, I have to admit, was my personal highlight of the day. The book was printed in 1630 and its cover is still in immaculate condition.

A 1630 print of Les Euvres de Mr Francois de Malherbe
 
François De Malherbe was a great reformer of French poetry and by some described as the father of French poetry. In South Africa, centuries later, the Malherbe family, descendants from Gidion Malherbe that arrived at the Cape of Good Hope from Normandy, France, in 1687, was instrumental in the development of the Afrikaans language and several of the family men were poets, writers and educators through the generations. 

Unfortunately, probably the most valuable book in the museum’s library cannot be seen except in digital format. It is the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, one of the best surviving examples of French Gothic manuscript illumination. (To learn more about manuscript illumination, click on the link.)

 Entrance to the Musée de Cheval

After our visit to the Musee Conde, we walked the half mile or so to the Horse museum. Meandering through the stables, seemingly one ancient horse stall to another, modernized to museum style, it does a decent job of capturing the history of the horse in military and personal usage; the history of saddles, stirrups, horse bits, and horse racing at the famous Chantilly race course, and much more. The stables are thought-provoking, to some degree, but as the French would say: C’est mon truc, the English equivalent of “not my cup of tea.” I have to admit it seemed M enjoyed the horse museum far more than I did, especially the royal carriages on show. She's got a soft spot for carriages.

 Collage of the Horse Museum

At the totally inadequately staffed snack restaurant on site, we waited way too long to be served and lingered only a short while after the late lunch before walking back to the estate’s entrance to await our bus back to the Chantilly train station.

 The Chateau de Chantilly basking in the late afternoon sun

Chantilly, the chateau, art museum and stables is certainly worth a visit. The estate is vast with woods, ponds, leafy walkways and bike lanes, and even small hamlets in the woods where workers used to live. It would have been a pleasant adventure to rent a golf cart, take a picnic basket and tour the vast estate, but that would be more appropriate during the summer months. Unfortunately we traveled there during December.

During the trip’s planning phase I initially included a visit to the Chateau of Vincennes in Paris, (close proximity) but I am glad M did some research, discovered the Paris chateau is not worth a visit and we both looked at Chantilly as an alternative to still our grave for visiting a castle of some sort on our short trip to France. I am glad we did investigate Chantilly. It was a fantastic escape from Paris. 

 Chantilly Chapel


 Two enormous horse heads dominates a small square