Château de Chantilly

Château de Chantilly stands roughly forty kilometres north of Paris, in the town of Chantilly in the Oise department, and ranks among the finest historic estates in France. The present château was largely rebuilt in the nineteenth century for the Duke of Aumale, Henri d'Orléans, who bequeathed the entire domain to the Institut de France in 1886. That bequest included the Condé Museum, which the duke had assembled over decades and which holds one of the most important collections of old master paintings in the country, second only to the Louvre in terms of French public collections.

The estate encompasses the Grand Château, the Petit Château, the Great Stables built by Jean Aubert in the early eighteenth century, and formal gardens laid out in part by André Le Nôtre. Visitors can currently explore the gardens and the Great Stables with skip-the-line access, or choose a gardens-only entry. The stables, designed to house over two hundred horses, now contain the Living Museum of the Horse and remain an architectural landmark in their own right.