Château du Raincy

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View of the estate in the 18th century.

The château du Raincy was constructed between 1643 and 1650 by Jacques Bordier, indendant des finances, in place of a Benedectine priory on the route from Paris to Meaux, in the present-day commune of Raincy (Seine-Saint-Denis, France).

Louis Le Vau was charged with designing the building. The gardens are traditionally ascribed to André Le Nôtre and the interior decoration — to Charles Le Brun. This team of masters also worked on the châteaux at Vaux-le-Vicomte and Versailles.

Surrounded by five pavilions and a network of dry moats, the château of Raincy was a private estate imbued with royal magnificence. The monumental stables could accommodate 200 horses. After Bordier added the territory of the seigneurie of Bondy to it, the park of 240 hectares was one of the most extensive in the vicinity of Paris.

Bordier's expenses amounted to the exorbitant sum of 4,500,000 livres, swallowing up his fortune. His son and heir, Hilaire, was constrained to sell the property to Princess Palatine, Anna Maria Gonzaga in 1663. After her death in 1684, the estate passed to her daughter, Anne-Henriette of Bavaria (1648-1723). Ten years later, Anne's husband, prince Henri Jules de Bourbon-Condé, ceded the property to Louis Sanguin, marquis du Livry, premier maître d'hôtel du Roi et capitaine des chasses; joining the domain to his of Livry the house became known as the château de Livry.

In 1769, the château was purchased by Louis Philippe d'Orléans, who had both the garden and interiors upgraded. His heir, Philippe-Égalité, engaged the Scottish gardener Thomas Blaikie to replace the formal gardens with a more natural landscape, one of the first jardins à l'anglaise in France.. The park was dotted by numerous follies, including an "old tower", a "farm", a kennel, an hermitage, and the celebrated Maisons Russes, scored to imitate Russian log huts.

During the French Revolution, the demesne was confiscated by the government and then passed through a succession of owners. On an unspecified date, Le Vau's château was demolished, only to be replaced by a conventional Neoclassical building, represented in an engraving from 1808. Napoleon I acquired Raincy in 1812, but the Prussian army quartered there the following year. The new château fell into neglect and was eventually demolished in 1819.

During the Restauration, Raincy reverted to the House of Orléans. King Louis Philippe would use the grounds for hunting, while his retinue would stay at the Maisons Russes. Nowadays, very little subsides of Bordier's estate. The statues of Henri II, Charles IX, Henri III, and Henri IV were transferred to the Louvre; the farm was converted into a church; only a part of the orangery is still visible.