Paris
Day
Trip :
Vaux-le-Vicomte
Practical informations
Vaux is one of the most exquisite of french chateaux (and less crowded
than Versailles, whose construction it reputedly inspired), but getting
there can be a bitch, as there is no shuttle service from the train
station in Melun to the Chateau 7 km away.
Driving : The castle is 50km out of Paris. Take autoroute A4 or A6 from
Paris and exit at Troyes-Nancy by N104. Head toward Meaux on N36 and
follow the signs.
By train : Take the RER to Melun from Chatelet-les Halles or Gare de
Lyon (45 minutes). Then tale a taxi to the Chateau. You can walk, but
it is a perilous trek - on the highway. Follow avenue de Thiers to the
highway 36, direction MEAUX and follow signs to Vaux-le-Vicomte. It
will take you 1h30-2h.
History
Nicolas Fouquet, Louis XIV's Minister of Finance,
assembled the triumvirate of le Vau, Le Brun, and Le Nôtre
(architect, artist and landscaper) to build Vaux in 1641. On
august 17,
1661, upon the completion of what was then France's most beautiful
château, Fouquet threw an extravagant 6000 guest party in honor
of Louis XIV. The King and Anne d'Autriche were but two if the
witnesses to a regal bacchanalia that premiered poetry by Jean de la
Fontaine and a comedy ballet, les Facheux, by
Molière. After
novelties like elephants in crystal jewelry and whales in the canal,
the evening concluded in a "chinese" fireworks extravaganza
featuring
the King and Queen's coat of arms and pyrotechnics squirrels (squirrels
were Fouquet's family symbol). But the housewarming bash was the
beginning of the end for Fouquet. Shortly thereafter, young Louis XIV -
supposedly furious at having been upstaged - ordered Fouquet
arrested Once he was in custody, it came to light that Fouquet had been
embezzling state funds. As Voltaire later write : "At six in the
evening, Fouquet was king of France, at two the next morning, he was
nothing." In a trial that lasted three years, the judges voted
narrowly for banishment over death. Louis XIV overturned the judgment
in favor if life imprisonment - the only time in French history that
the head of state overruled the court's decision in favor of a more
severe sentence. Fouquet was to remain imprisoned at Pignerol, in the
french Alps, until his death in 1680. Many suspected that Fouquet was
the man in the iron mask, including Alexandre Dumas, who fictionalized
the story in le Vicomte de Bragelonne.
