Château de Rambouillet

[1] The château was originally a fortified manor dating back to 1368 and, although amputated of its eastern wing at the time of Napoleon, it still retains its pentagonal bastioned footprint.

[3] Queen Marie Antoinette, who accompanied her husband on a visit in November 1783, is said to have exclaimed: "Comment pourrais-je vivre dans cette gothique crapaudière!"

However, to induce his wife to like his new acquisition, Louis XVI commissioned in great secret the construction of the renowned Laiterie de la Reine, (the Queen's dairy),[4] where the buckets were of Sèvres porcelain, painted and grained to imitate wood, and the presiding nymph was a marble Amalthea, with the goat that nurtured Jupiter, sculpted by Pierre Julien.

Among the reminders of Napoléon are the Pompeian style bathroom with its small bathtub and the exquisite balcony built to link the Emperor's apartment to that of his second wife, the Empress Marie-Louise.

It took twenty minutes to talk his son, Louis-Antoine, Duke of Angoulême, into, reluctantly, countersigning the document, thus abandoning his rights to the throne of France in favor of his nephew.

[9] From 1830 to 1848, the domain of Rambouillet, which had belonged to his grandfather, the duke of Penthièvre, was not included in Louis Philippe I's liste civile; however, begged to do so by the townspeople, the Emperor Napoléon III, who reigned from 1852 to 1870, requested its inclusion in his.

Since, the château of Rambouillet has become the summer residence of France's presidents of the republic, who entertain, and used to invite to hunting parties many foreign dignitaries, princes and heads of state.