Château du Raincy

The Château du Raincy (French pronunciation: [ʃɑto dy ʁɛ̃si]) was built between 1643 and 1650 for Jacques Bordier, Intendant des finances, following the Baroque plans drawn by architect Louis Le Vau on the site of a Benedictine priory on the road from Paris to Meaux, in the present-day commune of Le Raincy in the Seine-Saint-Denis department of France.

Surrounded by five pavilions and a network of dry moats, the Château du Raincy was at the heart of a private estate imbued with royal magnificence.

[3] The park was dotted with numerous follies, including an "old tower", a "farm", a decorative kennel, an hermitage, and the celebrated Maisons Russes, scored to imitate Russian isbas (log houses).

One was open to visitors as the "caffé Restorateur du Reinci dans le goût Russe" as a contemporary engraving labels it;[4] To add to the ambience of its parc à l'anglaise, the waiters spoke English.

Neglected and left in a bad state of disrepair since that period, the château designed by Le Vau was demolished and replaced by a conventional neoclassical building in the first decade of the 19th century, at the time of Napoléon I's First Empire, as can be seen in an engraving from 1808.