Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte

Nicolas Fouquet, Superintendent of Finances to Louis XIV from 1653, had Vaux-le-Vicomte, which he had bought in 1641, rebuilt. Louis Le Vau (architecture), André Le Nôtre (garden) and Charles Le Brun (interiors) worked together here for the first time on a large scale. On 17 August 1661 Fouquet gave a celebration at which Molière's "Les Fâcheux" was first performed; a few weeks later the king had him arrested in Nantes. He took the tapestries, statues and orange trees with him and put the artists to work at Versailles.

Le Nôtre's garden plays with perspective effects and has a main axis several kilometres long. Alfred Sommier bought the estate at auction in 1875 and began its restoration; today it belongs to his descendants, the de Vogüé family. The château is a Monument historique and attracts around 300,000 visitors a year. Allow several hours. In 2026 candlelit evenings were held on Saturdays from mid-May to the end of September; please check dates and opening times beforehand (as of October 2026). Inside, the state rooms on the ground floor with the king’s bedroom, Fouquet’s apartment on the upper floor and the kitchen in the basement are worth seeing; a climb leads under the roof timbers up to the roof for a panoramic view. Electric buggies can be hired in the garden (as of October 2026).