Château de Keriolet

Kériolet first appears in the records in 1481, as the home of Jean Trévaré, the ducal accountant overseeing the restoration of Concarneau's ramparts; a manor house dating from the 16th century, once the property of the Kériollet, Trédern and Kersalaun families, stood on the site before the present château.

In the late 1850s, under the Second Empire, Charles Chauveau — an artillery captain who served as a diplomatic courier between the Foreign Ministry and the French embassy in Saint Petersburg — met the immensely wealthy Russian widow Princess Zénaïde Yusupov, née Narychkine. She fell in love with him and wanted to marry him; faced with the scandal, Tsar Alexander II consented, but exiled the princess and imposed conditions. Chauveau was made a Roman count; he later took the name and arms of an extinct Nantes family, and was made Marquis de Serre. Hoping for a political career, he needed a residence in the constituency where a council-general seat had fallen vacant; elected in 1860, he personally bought the Kériolet estate at Beuzec-Conq — later absorbed into Concarneau — the following year.

Chauveau rebuilt Kériolet from the ground up under the architect Joseph Bigot; the work continued for about twenty years and cost close to 1.5 million gold francs. The new château drew on the Château de Blois for its relief of a mounted Louis XII, on the Château de Rustéphan for its stair turret, and on the priory of Locamand for its entrance portal; its carved decoration mixes the count's and marquis's coronets, fleurs-de-lys, the ermines of Brittany, stars in the Russian taste, and the linked initials of Anne of Brittany and Louis XII. The couple also bought and remodelled, on a far more modest scale, the neighbouring Manoir du Moros, once the property of Abraham Duquesne. The first stone of the château's chapel was laid in 1879.

Chauveau died at Kériolet in October 1882, aged 57, leaving the domain to his sister, Madame Emma Prieur. Zénaïde bought the domain back and gave it, with its lands and collections, to the department of Finistère, on condition that everything be kept as it stood; she went on spending summers at Kériolet until her death in 1893, when her remains were returned to Russia. The château was then opened to the public, displaying paintings by Camille Bernier that his widow had bequeathed to the department.

Zénaïde's great-grandson, Prince Felix Yusupov, sued for the château's return in the 1950s, arguing the department had breached the terms of her bequest by felling timber, parcelling off part of the park and selling furnishings. He won the case in 1956 and took possession of Kériolet.

Yusupov did not care for the château; its collections were soon dispersed, the estate broken up, and much of it sold and resold. The city of Concarneau bought the château in 1971, the year its chapel was demolished and its stones taken to build a house elsewhere. Decoration and parkland fittings were lost to theft as the building deteriorated, and the storm of 1987 stripped its roof.

Christophe Lévèque then bought the château, restored it and reopened it to the public in 1988. Kériolet had been listed as a monument historique in 1984, for its façades and roofs and for its guard hall with its fireplace and stained glass; it remains a private residence open to visitors.