Château de la Muette

Near the end of his reign, Charles IX had a royal hunting lodge on the site transformed into a small château for Marguerite de Valois, later the first wife of Henry IV.

In 1716, the château became the home of the Duchess of Berry, Marie-Louise Elisabeth d'Orléans, daughter of Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, Regent of France.

The Duke of Berry, later King Louis XVI, took possession of La Muette in 1764, and his future wife, Marie Antoinette, lodged there on her arrival in France.

Louis XVI is said to have spent the happiest days of his life at the château with his young bride, although they had no knowledge of sexual matters and thus did not have children for seven years.

The first manned flight commenced from the château on 21 November 1783, with a hot air balloon manufactured by the Montgolfier brothers lifting off from the garden of La Muette carrying Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlandes.

However, burning embers from the fire were scorching the balloon fabric and had to be extinguished with sponges, and so the pilots decided to land as soon as they were over open countryside.

In 1821, Sébastien Érard invented the double escapement action, which permitted a note to be repeated even if the key had not yet risen to its maximum vertical position, a great benefit for rapid playing.

Two large lots were sold to Baron Henri James de Rothschild, who built a new château in 1921 and 1922 as his Paris residence to a 19th-century design by Lucien Hesse.

During the Liberation of Paris in August 1944, the château was captured after a brief gunfight by the British '30 Assault Unit' keen on gathering vital intelligence.

The "Rue André Pascal" street on which the cour d'honneur of the château opens is named after one of the pseudonyms under which Henri de Rothschild published his literary works.