Private Tour of Chateau d’Haroué with its Owner | A Masterpiece of French Architecture

Welcome to the Château d'Arouet, our family estate which has been with us for nine generations. The Château d'Arouet is situated 20 kilometers south of Nancy in Lorraine. The particularity of this house is that Germain Beaufront, the architect, decided to do it around a calendar. So there's 365 windows like the days, 52 chimneys like the weeks, 12 tower and turrets like the months and four bridges like the seasons. So right now what I suggest is that we do a visit, a complete visit of the spaces open to the public as well as some privately owned spaces and that way you will see a complete different atmosphere within the public and the private of what a family owned estate looks like today. Come on in. So here we're in the centre of the house. The main staircase was decided to put on the side by the architect. We'll discover the staircase a bit after as we go along. The reason why they decided to put the staircase on the side was to keep these perspectives, so from the village to the house to the garden. The garden was finished in 1952 by my grandfather and his friend Emilio Terry. It is a Parc à la Française. We will finish the visit by going for a walk through it. Here you can find two chaises-apporteurs who were the chaises-apporteurs of my ancestors who constructed the house with the coat of arms de Beauvau, Léniville. So de Beauvau, Marc de Beauvau and Anne-Marguerite de Léniville, the constructors of the house. I will now invite you into the Salle d'Armes. So in the Salle d'Armes here you can discover 12 tapestries of the battles of Alexander the Great with Darius, 12 tapestries that were given by the Duke Leopold to his great friend Marc de Beauvau, constructor of the house. And again you can find the family emblem that you found on the chaises-apporteurs. You can also see the family emblem here on these two little tapestries done by Hubert de Gibanchy, a great friend of our mothers, and did a couple of exhibitions here around Cristobal Balenciaga, Gibanchy and Venet, and another one around emblematic wedding dresses. So here you can again find the emblems of the family. On these two tables you can find some family portraits. So my brother and I, Sébastien, are the ninth generation. Unfortunately in May 2023 our mother, Minnie de Beauvau, passed away and therefore we have inherited for just under a year. Here you can also find pictures of my brother with his wife, Lavinia Palacios, as well as some more fun pictures of our mother with Andy Warhol. Marc de Beauvau, my grandfather, my mother's father, last prince de Beauvau, had two daughters, Minnie, our mother, and Diane, who is also here and just behind. I invite you to the next room where you can continue to see the 12 tapestries that are still hanging in the house. Along on the floor it's the Parquet de Versailles, which you will see along all of the Red Chaussée, the Parquet de Versailles from when the house was built. The following room is an emblematic room for one important reason. Lorraine used to be independent and it is here that the papers were signed for Lorraine to become part of France. There is also a bed because it was the apartment of Anne-Marie de Lignyville, the constructor's wife, and you can find a bed, a short bed. Why a short bed? Because at the time, back in the day, it was bad luck to sleep laying down, so they used to sleep sitting up. As I said earlier, there's 12,000 turrets. In one of the towers that you're about to discover, my brother and I have decided to do a fast restoration work this year, so hopefully we will go and discover some of the restorers who are working on it. One of the particularities about this tower is that it's a Chinese tower done by Pilemont. Here, this tower is completely round. You can see it on the floor and the door as well. The tower is a Chinese tower done by Pilemont. This year, as I was saying, we're doing a restoration with the restaurateurs and we're doing a chantier-école. Chantier-école meaning that we're giving an opportunity for students who are working to be the future restorers to be able to come and work in a historical monument open to the public. Now we're going to discover in detail part of the restoration, which is fascinating. A way of being able to see the original colour is to use some varnish on the original pigments and to see what needs to be restored further. As you go along here on the bird of paradise, you can see the original colour and pigmentation coming out in comparison to the backstage. Voilà, super, merci beaucoup. From here, I wanted to take you to the bibliothèque, which is privately, it's not open to the public, but it's a very special room which we very much like as a family to meet there. At the end of the bibliothèque, the thing that's very nice that you can discover is the enfilade, something that the architect was very good at doing. So here you have a long enfilade which brings you to the end of the u-shape of the castle. Voilà, so here you're in the family bibliothèque, somewhere that we enjoy to come as a family. It's got a beautiful view of the garden that I was telling you about, the Jardin à la Française as well as the bibliothèque full of books. The other particularity of this room, if I may say, is the paintings of family ancestors are positioned touche-touche to be able to cover the entire room. So this was something that was very much done back in the day. Furthermore, something that we very much like, which is a memory of our great aunt, is for 10 years we used to do a festival of Opéra en plein air in the French garden with the house as the background and there was 2,500 people who used to come and our great aunt used to do for every opera, she did the cushions, so Madame Butterfly, Don Juan, Rigoletto, which are fantastic souvenirs for us. This, just for you to bear in mind, is all private, not open to the public, and through to the next room, as we get to the tower, which is our summer lunch and dining area, you can come here to discover the painting of Marco Polo's travels, as well as the daughter of the constructor of Arouet, Marc de Beauvau and Anne-Marie de Lignyville. Here, this tower, which is much more Italian than the one you may have seen, is somewhere that in summer is fantastic due to the light, because we're completely south-facing. You may have noticed that the house is surrounded by water, so surrounded by douve, which was there at the time to protect and has always been in water ever since. As I was telling you earlier, we can now go and discover the Escalier d'honneur, so the main staircase, which is de-centred and that I invite you to come and see, and that will bring us up to the first floor, which was finished in the year 2000 by our mother, Minnie de Beauvau. To get to this staircase, we're going to discover and get through it via a secret little door, which is hidden in the Bibliothèque. Here is the staircase that was done by one of the artisans of Lorraine, Jean Lamour. So this staircase, you can see, has the C entrelacé pour Craon, Beauvau-Craon. You can find de Ferronnier's work not only at the gate of the entrance of the house, but also in Nancy at La Place Stanislas, which is a very beautiful square in Lorraine that also has artwork by Jean Lamour. Just behind this curtain is the family tree from the beginning, which shows the descendants of the de Beauvau-Craon family, coming from the Comte d'Anjou. Unfortunately, due to the fact that it's very old, we can't see the names or the dates anymore, so the only historical thing that is still to be discovered is to see the family coats of arms of each person who got married to one another. We will now continue going upstairs to the first floor. So our mother had a few artist friends that she used to enjoy asking them to come and inspire themselves from the house. So here you can see a piece by Eduardo Oliveira César, an Argentine artist, who came to our way and who got inspired by this staircase. So this is his version of what inspired him here. Right here behind us, you can see the carton, so the works, the first works that were done to realise the tapestries which you discovered downstairs. Those were the preliminary works. From there, the tapestries were made at La Malgrange. La Malgrange is a place in Lorraine which is where they teave the tapestries. The tapestries were done with three threads, gold, silver and silk. So now we're going to go and discover the first floor, which was finished in 2010. So here we're in the Antichambre of the Roi Louis XVIII. This is the Antichambre, which we will then discover, the Mobilier of the Roi Louis XVIII. As we go through to discover, we have put in the next room a couple of family pictures again. So you can meet my niece and nephew, Isabella and Tassilo, who are the 10th generation, as well as our mother and Louis XVIII. Here in 2000, our mother decided to do the restoration of the first floor. The first floor had never been restored and was still, as you can see on those two images, unfinished. The reason she decided to finish the first floor was, A, to finish it, because each generation tries to complete and finish something as they go along, and secondly, was to give room to this Mobilier Louis XVIII, the Royal Mobilier. These two rooms, or this floor, we were able to finish it thanks to the Banque SNVB, La Région du Grand Est, LADRAC and the Département. They all helped make a dream possible. We managed to do this with the École Boules, which is a very renowned school for students who work in restoration to come. So we had them here for three years restoring the first floor. And then the second room was for the Mobilier again of the Roi Louis XVIII, but for his billiard mobilier, so French billiard, which doesn't have holes on the billiard table. Why is the mobilier here today? The mobilier here today is thanks to Zoé Dukela, who you can see in this portrait, surrounded by her son, Hugolin, and her daughter, Valentin. Valentin married Marc de Beauvau, and at her death, the furniture was given to Valentin. Zoé Dukela was the confidante of Louis XVIII, hence why it's here today. Now I'm going to invite you to discover more a 19th century room, which was done by Hébert, all gold painted. You can see on the paintings the four seasons again, so summer, spring, autumn, winter. In this room, we're fortunate enough to have the furniture lent to us by the Mobilier Français. How did it come here? In 2021, the family were fortunate enough to sign a partnership with the Centre des Monuments Nationaux in France, who run many monuments open to the public. So they are here with us to help embellish and make this house discovered by as many people as possible. So that's why it's here today, and the Centre des Monuments Nationaux are in partnership with us. Here is another tower, so we can discover it completely painted. As we were going along, I thought that it might be interesting for you to discover a tower from the water level to the Rue de Chaussée, to the first floor, to under the roof. So right now, we're on the first floor. Earlier, you discovered what they are doing in the Tour Pilemont, the Chinese tower, which is where the restoration is. From here, I'm going to take you along to come and see some more family pictures, a room that we've dedicated to family members, a bit more informal than some of the family portraits you are going to see, that you have seen along the way. And as well, you can also discover some pictures of the exhibition done by Hubert de Gibanchy. So again, here, Marc de Beauvoir, our grandfather, who had two daughters, Minnie and Diane. Diane de Beauvoir and her son, Younes. And then, of course, the kids. And then a picture of my mother on her first wedding with her father. And here again, you can find the seating plan, which was done for her wedding in 1978 to Duncan McLaren. And to finish off the tour of the public area, is dedicated to the Bolivian side of our family. My grandfather married his wife, Bolivian, who had two, again, the two daughters, Diane and Minnie. I now invite you to come and see, in the private, some bedrooms. Bedrooms that we very much like. And that way you can see the side of the house, which is a U-shape, open to the public, the middle of the U, and the two sides of the U are for us privately. Here again, you can see a staircase, which isn't the main staircase, but a staircase which is exactly in symmetry to the one that you saw earlier. The architects were all about symmetry when it came to design in Narue, and you can see another long enfilade. I'm going to invite you into one of the rooms. So this room, as you will be able to see, a bedroom that has completely been left from its origins. The detail is impressive. For me, it's something that I very much like because it's very hard to recreate this kind of attention to detail that is a bit, as they say in French, délavé. And you can see some images of Venice, of Versailles, and other. And now I want to bring you to one particular place, which is not often seen, but a bathroom. Why do I want to show you the bathroom? It's because at the time, back in the day, they used ways that are not seen so much anymore, that I will show you in just a moment. So to get to this bathroom, you come through a room. And in order to let the water go, the sink, one had to open it up so that the water could let out. So there's no hole in the sink here. And this is something that I very rarely see and that I find a fun little thing in the bathroom. As I was mentioning earlier, I think that now it's time to go and discover the views from the roof and to go and discover the top bit of the tower. Come along. So here, I love these spaces. Why do I love these spaces? Because I'm fascinated by how they used to work at the perfection and all the attention to detail. For me, there's one of the biggest views because you really see the ample of the house. You can also discover the works done by the Ferronnier, Jean Lamour, and the C'est Entrelacé, as well as the statues by Guibal. Again, on the front of the house, you can see the coat of arms on the fronton. And now the tower, again, the proportions, again, the fact that it's all round, is for me that you can discover that already from the top and from the skeleton is something that I find amazing. And for me, the roof and the perfection of this is rare. From here, we're going to go down to the water level to discover the last bit of the tower. And then we will go and I will show you our family little chapel before going for a walk in the gardens outside. Here we go. Let's go to the cab downstairs. So here, the cab is on the water level of the Douve. The cab in the year 2000s was redone in a certain way to become a space for artists to come and show their work. So my mother, at the same time as the Centre Pompidou in Metz opened, did an exhibition with the gallery of Al Minhaich with the artist Beatrice Caracciolo, who imagined for this space some of her artwork. And that's so here you can discover the whole of the cab and which is going to bring us to the last bit of the four-story tower that we were talking about. So here on the water level, the tower, the tower. So you'll be able to see the big differences between what a tower on water level is, a tower on the first floor being restored, a tower on the ground, sorry, the ground floor being restored, the first floor, and then upstairs. So you can see all of the different atmospheres which may bring you. And here you can see being on water level. From here, maybe we could go back upstairs and we can go and see the chapel quickly before going out to the gardens. So here, to your left, you will be able to come and see the chapel. Please come in. So this family chapel is a place that we very much like to come and think about the past generations. Every year, we used to be for our grandfather, but as well as our grandfather, we will now do a church service for our mother as a family. And that's where we will be on the 12th of May. So this little chapel, which is very nice. And then from here, let's go to have a walk in the gardens. So here, the Parc à la Française by Emilio Terry in 1952. So that's the final bit of the visit today. Thank you very much for visiting with me. I hope that we'll be able to welcome you here. And lastly, I'm sure you have one question that might still be in your head, is what are the young generation going to do now with the house? The most important thing we have to do, I believe, my brother and I, is to be able to maintain this house for the future generations. And so, as you saw, we started a renovation already in the Chinese tower in La Tour Piedmont with the Chantier Ecole. And we're hoping to, as soon as 2025, so next year, we're hoping to start restoration on the bigger picture. So on the outside elements and some elements inside to make sure that this is passed down in the best way and to maintain it for generations to come. There you go. Thank you once again.