France's Château de Maintenon: The castle of Louis XIV's secret wife • FRANCE 24 English

This Renaissance-style chateau would probably remain largely unknown if it hadn't become home to the secret wife of Louis XIV, Madame de Maintenon. Françoise d'Aubigné, her real name, was a woman of modest origin and is often compared to Cinderella. Françoise would become the governess of the children of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan, born out of wedlock. That was how she first came to meet Louis. He would pay her a handsome salary for her favor, and it was with this that she was able to purchase the chateau. Little by little, Louis came to fall in love with Madame de Maintenon. So it's a true love story. King Louis married her. And they stayed married for thirty years. Thirty years during which the chateau would undergo numerous transformations. This twelfth-century square tower was built to watch the river and protect the site from attack. But under Madame de Maintenon, it lost its defensive role and gradually became a residence. In the seventeenth century, when Madame de Maintenon bought the castle, she had windows inserted in the square tower. As a defensive tower in the Middle Ages, it naturally didn't have windows. But Madame de Maintenon wanted to turn it into apartments for her guests. Apartments which, for the moment, are closed to the public for safety reasons. Jean Rendre, the last private owner of the chateau, recalls its state of disrepair when his wife inherited it after the Second World War. During the bombardments in 1945, the chateau lost its roof and nearly all the windows. A lot of the ceilings had collapsed and most of the interior doorways had been blown out. But we were young and probably a bit reckless. So we didn't start all the rebuilding work until 1953. They dedicated their lives to restoring the chateau's beauty. So well, in fact, that today it pulls in tens of thousands of visitors every year. And notably, the region's schoolchildren. She's pictured with children. But who are they? She was a gov... Ver... Er... Governor! No one said it! Governess! And what's a governess? This primary school class is studying the 17th century. Each subject requires at least two months of preparation with tailor-made tools. We use a lot of photos and other representations of the time beforehand to help them make the link between past and present. And then they actually come to the place and it's magical. Castles are the stuff of dreams and they're really happy to discover them in a way that makes a difference. Is that true? You're enjoying the visit? Ouiiii! Over the past decade, the number of visitors has quadrupled at Maintenon. Not without causing a number of problems. The constant vibrations made by passing visitors have made certain works more fragile. So to better protect the collections, like these 2,200 books, in 2018 the chateau joined a European preventive preservation program. Experts come to see how the works might be harmed by the lighting, the heating, and the proximity to the river Ur, which causes high levels of damp. Other than the collections, the site's biggest maintenance demands are in the French-style garden, reconstructed from drawings by the famous landscape architect André Le Nôtre. The garden had been designed, the plans were kept in the French National Library, but was never laid out. So in 2013 we decided to do it, using rope and string, just as Le Nôtre would have done it in his day. A garden laid out entirely with the methods of the day. And it demands constant attention. Four gardeners are needed to prune the 12,000 boxwood plants and the 60 topiaries. It's very important to prune by hand. If you want nice straight edges, you have to prune by hand, plus you'll have a lot fewer diseases developing. Unlike a classic French-style garden, this one has flowers in spring, and always with a touch of blue. Madame de Maintenon always said I should have carpeted the chateau with blue. So in honor of her, I always plant some blue along the river. Here there are some blue forget-me-nots, and in the summer we plant blue sage as well. So there's always some blue for Madame de Maintenon. Fifteen thousand tulips are also planted every year. They bloom in spring, forming an unparalleled palette of colors. An annual event known fondly as the Tulipiades. As poetic a way possible to revive the legend of the chateau of Louis XIV's secret wife.