Paris Day-trip
Monte-Cristo Castle
Château de Monte-Cristo - The paradise of d'Alexandre Dumas - 25
mn
from Paris.
RER Direction
St-Nom-la-Bretêche, arrêt Marly-le-Roi. Bus 10 arrêt
Les Lampes.
Accueil 1, Avenue Kennedy, Port-Marly. 01.39.16.49.49.
Thanks to the success of the Three Musketeers (les Trois
Mousquetaires), Alexandre Dumas offers his small romantic castle in the
close countryside which borders Paris. It will be the Castle of
Monte-Cristo located at Port-Marly. This eccentric residence was
built in a style Néo-Renaissance evoking the fastes of a royalty
of operetta. A few years earlier, another famous author, Walter
Scott, built in Scotland its castle of Abbotsford which it lived until
his death. On the other hand, Dumas remained only a few years in
its castle drawn by the architect Hippolyte Durand, before his
creditors obliged him to exile itself in Brussels. A small zoo
cohabits with the writer in his residence, dogs, horses, monkeys,
birds. On the first floor, a mauresque show evokes African
Tunisia visited by Dumas a few times before. In the romantic park
with cascades and caves, a small study baptized castle of Yew, hut
almost grotesque neo-Gothic, accomodates the writer during his hours of
composition. On its walls the titles of 88 best-sellers of the
host are engraved. The toothed rack is hung on July 25, 1847 in the
presence of 600 guests. Very quickly, a troop of freeloaders will
settle in the convenient places, courtiers, to live with the hooks of
Dumas and precipitating her ruin. The castle is seized by the
Justice on August 5, 1848. Renovated in 1985, it finds its
forgotten splendour and the splendid evocations of
épopées of its owners.