Built between 1658 and 1661 for Nicolas Fouquet, Marquis de Belle Île, Viscount of Melun and Vaux, the Superintendent of Finances of Louis XIV, the château was an influential work of architecture in mid-17th-century Europe.

[1] Once a small château between the royal residences of Vincennes and Fontainebleau, the estate of Vaux-le-Vicomte was purchased in 1641 by Nicolas Fouquet, an ambitious 26-year-old member of the Parlement of Paris.

At the inauguration of Vaux-le-Vicomte, a Molière play was performed, along with a dinner event organized by François Vatel and an impressive firework show.

[4] The château was lavish, refined and dazzling to behold, but those characteristics proved tragic for its owner: the king had Fouquet arrested shortly after a famous fête that took place on 17 August 1661, where Molière's play 'Les Fâcheux' debuted.

"He came for the [Charles] Le Brun paintings, especially those on the ceiling of the Chambre des Muses – he loved art," according to descendant Alexandre de Vogüé.

[9] For some time, the family occupied the first floor, and then the refurbished stables, of this largest private château in France with its 1,235 acres of gardens.

The Baroque ceiling in the Chambre des Muses, "decorated by Charles Le Brun's workshop",[11] was restored in 2016–2017 and was first shown to the public in March 2017.

We make this list public for our donors, and people can sponsor a special project, such as restoring a statue in the garden," Alexandre told a reporter in 2017.

Recognized by the state as a monument historique, the property is open most of the year, but closed for approximately two months in winter, 6 January to 22 March in 2019, for example.

During the Christmas season, major decorations are installed: 150 trees, 10,000 items and 4,000 metres of garlands and lights, as well as a giant illuminated squirrel and angel, in 2018.

The two rooms in the centre, the entrance vestibule to the north and the oval salon to the south, were originally an open-air loggia, dividing the château into two distinct sections.

[15] Another surprising feature of the plan is the thickness of the main body of the building (corps de logis), which consists of two rows of rooms running east and west.

[16] The main château is constructed entirely on a moated platform, reached via two bridges, both aligned with the central axis and placed on the north and south sides.

This U-shaped plan of the house with the terraces is a device that again recalls Maisons, where Mansart intended "to indicate that his château was conceived in a noble tradition of French design while at the same time emphasizing its modernity in comparison to predecessors.

"[17] The entrance front of the main château is characteristically French, with the two lateral pavilions flanking a central avant-corps, again reminiscent of Mansart's work at Maisons.

The enormous, double-height Grand Salon that substantially protrudes from the corps de logis clearly dominates the southern elevation.

The salon is covered by a huge slate dome surmounted with an imposing lantern and is fronted with a two-storey portico that is almost identical to one at the Hôtel Tambonneau.

Although he himself had never been there, he undoubtedly knew from drawings and engravings of examples in buildings, such as the Palazzo Barberini in Rome, and had already used one to great effect at his Château du Raincy.

"[16] The lateral pavilions of the garden facade project only slightly but are three bays wide with traditional tall slate roofs like those on the entrance front, effectively balancing the central domed salon.

[16] The château rises on an elevated platform in the middle of the woods and marks the border between unequal spaces, each treated in a different way.

Le Nôtre's garden was the dominant structure of the great complex, stretching nearly a mile and a half (3 km),[2] with a balanced composition of water basins and canals contained in stone curbs, fountains, gravel walks, and patterned parterres that remains more coherent than the vast display Le Nôtre was to create at Versailles.

[21] Past the canal, the garden ascends a large open lawn and ends with the Hercules column added in the 19th century.

[3] Le Nôtre employed an optical illusion called anamorphosis abscondita (which might be roughly translated as 'hidden distortion') in his garden design in order to establish decelerated perspective.

Next, a circular pool, previously seen as ovular due to foreshortening, is passed and a canal that bisects the site is revealed, as well as a lower level path.

The grottos are actually on a much lower level than the rest of the garden and separated by a wide canal that is over half a mile (almost a kilometre) long.

Once the canal and grottos have been passed, the large sloping lawn is reached and the garden is viewed from the initial viewpoint's vanishing point, thus completing the circuit as intended by Le Nôtre.

[24] For example, the property was used as the California home of the main villain Hugo Drax (played by Michael Lonsdale) in the 1979 James Bond film Moonraker.

In addition, the château appeared in several episodes of The Revolution, which is a documentary television series about the American Revolutionary War that was broadcast by History Channel in 2006.