Château de Condé

The château stands on the site of what was probably a Gallo-Roman estate — an ancient pavement survives beneath the present floor — and the village takes its name from the Celtic condatum, "confluence", where the Surmelin and Dhuys rivers meet before joining the Marne.

Jean de Montmirail was the first recorded lord of Condé. His son-in-law, Enguerrand III, Lord of Coucy, built a keep here around 1200, part of which still stands, with walls two metres thick. The Coucy family held Condé until its last heir, Marie I de Coucy, Countess of Soissons, moved into the château with her husband, Henry of Bar, in the 15th century; the estate then passed by marriage to the House of Luxembourg.

In 1487 Marie of Luxembourg married Francis de Bourbon, Count of Vendôme, bringing Condé into the orbit of the French royal family. Their grandson, Antoine de Bourbon, Duke of Vendôme, was the father of King Henry IV; Antoine's brother, Louis de Bourbon, the first Prince of Condé, came often to Condé to hunt as a child, and it was his title the château's name would carry down.

A cardinal of the Bourbon-Vendôme line rebuilt the château in Renaissance style in the 16th century; the two surviving gatehouses date from this rebuilding, one housing the captain of the château above an underground jail, the other — now a barn — the housekeeper's lodge. Condé became one of the strongholds of the Prince of Condé, leader of the Protestant party in the French Wars of Religion; his wife, Éléonore de Roye, raised their children here away from the fighting and died at the château in 1564. The prince himself was assassinated at Jarnac in 1569. Condé stayed with the House of Bourbon-Condé until 1624, when Marie de Bourbon, Countess of Soissons, married Thomas, Prince of Carignan, of the branch of the House of Savoy that became the Italian royal family.

Louis XIV confiscated the Savoy family's French properties in 1711; Condé was placed under sequestration and occupied by troops until 1719, leaving it badly damaged. That year it was bought by Jean-François Leriget, Marquis de la Faye, a councillor and diplomat to Louis XIV who was later entrusted with finding a wife for the young Louis XV, and who sat in the French Academy and directed the French India Company.

The marquis gave Condé much of its present appearance. He brought in the Italian architect Servandoni, one of the architects of the Palazzo Farnese in Rome, who removed the château's fourth wing to let in more light and, where the medieval walls were too thick for real windows, painted false ones in trompe-l'œil. Watteau, Boucher, Oudry and Lemoyne, among others, decorated the interiors for the marquis. Condé passed by marriage to the Count de la Tour du Pin Lachaux, and in 1814 to the Countess de Sade, who inherited it from her cousin.

The château stood near the Marne front in the First World War and was taken and retaken, suffering shell damage. In the Second World War it was occupied for the duration of the conflict, bombed and looted, though its most valuable artworks were saved at the last moment. The Sade family, who still owned Condé, resumed possession in 1946 and restored it in three phases over more than three decades: rebuilding doors and windows and repairing the roof through 1958, restoring the water supply and the rooms open to visitors through 1968, and repainting ceilings and restoring the Servandoni room's canvases and the Oudry paintings through 1980. Condé was listed as a historic monument in 1979.

Alain Pasté de Rochefort bought the château in 1983, a return of sorts, since his ancestor Captain Pasté had been one of two captains of the first Prince of Condé's personal guard in the 16th century. He continued the restoration until his accidental death in 1993, after which his wife and children carried on the work. The château remains a private, year-round residence today.