The Château de
Saint-Cloud

The name Saint-Cloud conceals a considerably older history. As early as Roman times, a settlement named Novigentum existed in the area of the later town. From this Latin designation developed the French name Nogent. It was only much later that the place became associated with the Merovingian prince Clodoald, whose name ultimately gave rise to the name Saint-Cloud by which it is known today.^[2]

Clodoald (the Saint / fr. Saint Cloud) was the son of the Frankish king Clodomir of Orléans and therefore a grandson of Clovis I.. After his father's early death, he and his brothers Thibault and Gonthaire became caught up in the dynastic power struggles of the Merovingians. Their uncles Childebert and Clotaire claimed the inheritance of the young princes; Clodoald's brothers were killed, while he himself escaped.

The young prince subsequently renounced his dynastic claims and withdrew with followers into the forests of Nogent. There he lived as a priest until his death on 7 September 560. After his death he was venerated as a holy prince. Over time, Saint-Clodoald became Saint-Cloud; the settlement adopted this name and later passed it on to the château.

The source situation for the early history of the later château site remains difficult. Although estates on the hill above the bend of the Seine west of Paris, between Sèvres and Saint-Cloud, repeatedly belonged to the French royal family or its collateral branches from the Middle Ages onwards, the precise development of the site can only be reconstructed incompletely. It is not until the sixteenth century that the records become more substantial, allowing the transition from a simpler Hôtel through an aristocratic Maison to the later Château de Saint-Cloud to be traced.

This very uncertainty is characteristic of the history of Saint-Cloud. The place did not emerge through a single grand act of foundation, but through layers of transfers of ownership, alterations, extensions and reassessments. Its exceptional position above the Seine, its proximity to Paris and later Versailles, its available water resources and its wide views made it an ideal location for those early modern country residences which, in the seventeenth century, acquired their own architectural and social significance as maisons de plaisance.^[3]

Katharina Krause understands the maison de plaisance not merely as a building type, but as an expression of a new aristocratic way of life. Unlike the great ceremonial residences, it combined representation with leisure, an experience of nature, social life and a conscious distance from the strictly ritualised world of the court.^[4] Saint-Cloud was to assume a particularly influential position in this development – as was also the case with the Château de Marly [see LdF LA-0005 here], which, despite its considerably shorter history, its estate not having developed from earlier phases of rule and construction, and its entirely different conception under Louis XIV, nevertheless occupied an equally exceptional position within the landscape of court residences.

With the sixteenth century, the ownership and architectural changes at Saint-Cloud become more clearly visible. The site initially contained the so-called Hôtel d’Aulnay, an estate whose position above the bend of the Seine already possessed the landscape qualities that would later become one of the château's defining characteristics.

A decisive role was played by Catherine de Médicis. The queen mother, who came from Florence, apparently spent increasing amounts of time in Saint-Cloud from the 1570s onwards and had a pleasure house built there in 1572, facing south. Around 1577 she acquired the entire estate. According to older accounts, courtly recreation was probably not the only consideration. Plans to make use of water from the local springs via an aqueduct for the gardens of the Palais des Tuileries in Paris also seem to have been connected with Saint-Cloud.

In the same year, Catherine sold the Hôtel d’Aulnay, together with its outbuildings and associated lands, to her chevalier d’honneur and introducteur des ambassadeurs, the Lyon-born banker Jérôme de Gondi. The Florentine-descended Gondi belonged to that group of Italian families who combined political influence, financial power and social prestige around the queen mother. At Saint-Cloud, they created a country residence on the outskirts of Paris that was at once a retreat, a status symbol and a stage for courtly sociability.

Jérôme de Gondi had a smaller maison built around the older Hôtel d’Aulnay, consisting of two wings arranged at right angles. The principal façade faced south; the side wing extending west ended in a pavilion. Terraced gardens connected the architecture with the hillside above the Seine and opened up broad views towards Paris. The elements that would later prove decisive to the character of Saint-Cloud were therefore already in place: outlook, topography, water and garden as components of a staged aristocratic way of life.

On 1 August 1589, Saint-Cloud became the scene of one of the most dramatic events of the French Wars of Religion. Henri III., the last king of the House of Valois, was staying at the Maison de Gondi during the siege of Paris when the Dominican friar Jacques Clément entered the estate and mortally wounded him. As he lay dying, Henri III confirmed his brother-in-law Henri de Navarre as his legitimate successor. Saint-Cloud was thus directly connected with the transition from the Valois dynasty to the House of Bourbon.

After Jérôme de Gondi's death in 1604, the estate changed hands several times within the wider family and circle of owners. In 1618, Jean-Baptiste II. de Gondi sold the Maison to Jean de Bueil, Comte de Sancerre. After his death it returned to the Gondi family in 1625, this time to Jean-François de Gondi, Archbishop of Paris. Saint-Cloud was further extended and architecturally developed under him as well.

No detailed plans of these works have survived. Nevertheless, the sources document extensive garden works by the Florentine hydraulic engineer and garden designer Thomas Francine, actually Tommaso Francini, who was one of the leading specialists in hydraulic art in early seventeenth-century France. This combination of Italian-influenced villa culture, terracing and the staging of water makes the Gondi period particularly important to the later development of Saint-Cloud.^[5]

When the archbishop died in 1654, Philippe-Emmanuel de Gondi inherited the family residence and almost immediately passed it on to his nephew Henri de Gondi, Duc de Retz. He too retained the Maison de Gondi only briefly and sold the estate to Barthélemy Hervart as early as 1655. This sale brought the Gondi period at Saint-Cloud to an end.

The exact state of the estate at the time of this sale can now only be partially reconstructed. Several travel accounts from the first half of the seventeenth century are therefore particularly valuable, including those by Élie Brackenhoffer, Abraham Gölnitz and John Evelyn, who described Saint-Cloud before Hervart's major alterations.^[6]

The visitors describe Saint-Cloud as a strongly Italianate villa with richly decorated façades, painted ornament and bronze stucco reliefs depicting the French kings Charles IX, Henri III, Henri IV and Louis XIII on horseback. Particular emphasis was placed on the frescoed loggia, with its wide view across the Seine towards Paris, as well as the extensive gardens with statues, water features, fountains, aviaries and grottoes.^[7]

These descriptions are particularly important for the architectural history of Saint-Cloud, as they provide a rare impression of a transitional phase in which the older Maison de Gondi had already become a representative aristocratic estate, but had not yet undergone the far-reaching architectural changes later carried out by Barthélemy Hervart and Philippe I d’Orléans. Some of the furnishings mentioned by the travellers may, however, already have resulted from initial extensions and modernisations immediately before or during the early Hervart period.

The combination of courtly proximity, Italian garden art, terracing, hydraulic architecture and the staging of the landscape created by the Gondi family thus remained the true seedbed of the later Château de Saint-Cloud.

In 1655, Saint-Cloud passed into the possession of the banker Barthélemy Hervart. Hervart came from a Protestant banking family with roots in Augsburg and belonged to a new elite of wealthy civil servants and financiers who acquired considerable political and economic influence during the rule of Cardinal Mazarin.^[8] During the Thirty Years' War he had already acted as a financier and paymaster in the circle of Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar and later became one of the French Crown's most important creditors. During the Fronde, Hervart supported the monarchy with extensive loans and eventually himself rose to become an intendant and later Contrôleur général des finances.^[9] His brief period of ownership was more significant for Saint-Cloud than its few years might initially suggest.

Under Hervart, the older Maison was not merely repaired but fundamentally upgraded through extension. The most important source for this early phase of transformation is a historical plan of the gardens, which shows not only the layout of the park but also the state of the main building and its planned extension. Precisely because the written record of the early building phases is fragmentary, this plan carries particular weight for research.

Krause points out that the plan reveals a clear change from the older Maison de Gondi. Whereas the earlier estate is likely to have been comparatively modest and irregular, the new arrangement shows a representative building with a Baroque spatial organisation. Symmetrical sequences of rooms were grouped around a spacious, centrally positioned staircase. Under Hervart, Saint-Cloud therefore already appears as an architecturally organised residence rather than simply a grown Maison on the Seine hillside.^[10]

The gardens were also radically altered. The plan shows architecture, terraces, water features and garden axes increasingly conceived as a coherent ensemble. Hervart had new cascades, basins and grottoes created. His works can certainly be associated with a large cascade – which must not be confused with the later Grande Cascade that still survives today – the Bassin du Grand Jet and a grotto above the cascade. Contemporary sources also mention that Hervart had water brought from Garches and Vaucresson to Saint-Cloud in order to expand the park's hydraulic system and increase the capacity of its water features.^[11]

Contemporary views, particularly the engravings by Israël Silvestre, confirm the impression of an already exceptionally prestigious estate. Under Hervart, Saint-Cloud became a Baroque prestige residence whose value increased enormously within a very short time. After only three years, Hervart sold the estate for 331,548 livres – more than four and a half times the price he had paid the Duc de Retz.^[12]

Hervart therefore represents the decisive link between the Italian-influenced Maison de Gondi and the later residence of the House of Orléans. In 1658, Philippe I d’Orléans did not take over a simple country house, but an already modernised, architecturally ambitious estate whose landscape had been carefully staged. The great building campaign under Monsieur therefore did not begin from scratch, but monumentalised a development that had already begun in earnest under Hervart.

With the acquisition of the Château de Saint-Cloud for Philippe I. d’Orléans, the most important building phase in the history of the château began in 1658. The future Duke of Orléans received the residence at the age of just eighteen from his brother Ludwigs XIV., after Barthélemy Hervart had transformed the estate into a highly modern prestige residence only a few months earlier.^[13]

The precise background to this acquisition ultimately remains unclear in the sources. However, research repeatedly suggests that Cardinal Jules Mazarin and the queen mother Anne d’Autriche deliberately intended Saint-Cloud to provide Philippe with a prestigious living environment that was nevertheless geographically removed from the immediate centre of court life. From an early age, Monsieur was regarded as an exceptionally wilful and difficult-to-control figure whose circle of favourites and courtiers repeatedly gave rise to gossip about his homosexuality, intrigues and scandals. Saint-Cloud may therefore have been understood not only as a prestigious gift, but also as a means of drawing Philippe more firmly into an appropriate role as a great aristocratic householder and patron of building.

Reconstructing the early ownership history is complicated by the fact that the actual purchase contract between Barthélemy Hervart and the court has not survived. It can nevertheless be reconstructed with some confidence that the Château de Saint-Cloud was acquired in October 1658 by Louis XIV, or through Cardinal Mazarin, for Philippe I d’Orléans. The purchase price given in the sources varies between 240,000 and 331,548 livres.

The exact date of purchase also remains uncertain. 25 October 1658 is often given, several weeks after a grand banquet Hervart hosted at Saint-Cloud in honour of the king, his brother Philippe, Anne d’Autriche and Mazarin. Contemporary reports in the particularly reliable Gazette, however, indicate that the estate was already in Monsieur's possession earlier. On 19 October 1658, the Paris Gazette had already reported a visit by Anne d’Autriche and Henriette d’Angleterre to “Monsieur’s fine house, formerly belonging to Monsieur Hervart”. This would suggest that the acquisition may have taken place at the beginning of October, or even immediately after the first gatherings at Saint-Cloud. Later dating to the spring of 1659 therefore appears unlikely.

Another possible date of purchase is given by the 1771 work Curiositées de Paris, de Versailles, Marly, Vincennes, Saint-Cloud, et des Environs, which dates the acquisition to 8 October 1658. Whatever the uncertainties in the details, Saint-Cloud had thus returned to royal family ownership after almost one hundred years.

Philippe, usually referred to simply as “Monsieur” at court, was the younger brother of the king and one of the most colourful figures of French court life. Saint-Cloud offered him a stage on which to display rank, taste, dynastic proximity and personal independence. The estate developed into one of the most magnificent aristocratic residences in France.

Through numerous land purchases, the estate grew from around twelve hectares in 1658 to almost four hundred hectares by the duke's death in 1701 – an area that already corresponded almost to the present-day Domaine nationale de Saint-Cloud.^[14] This expansion fundamentally changed the significance of Saint-Cloud. A high-ranking Maison became a vast courtly territory.

Numerous architects, artists and garden designers worked on the project. The Corps-de-Logis in particular was enlarged and architecturally redesigned. The façades increasingly adopted the monumental language of representation also characteristic of the great royal residences of the period. Inside, richly furnished apartments, galleries and salons were created.

At the same time as the château was expanded, Philippe I d’Orléans also had the gardens greatly enlarged. André Le Nôtre designed terraces, parterres, cascades and monumental water features. Antoine Le Pautre was also commissioned, between 1660 and 1664, to create a monumental buffet d’eau, identified with the upper section of the later Grande Cascade.^[15]

The Galerie d’Apollon on the first floor of the north wing became particularly famous. It was one of the most spectacular interiors of the French Grand Siècle and powerfully underlined the representational ambitions of the House of Orléans. Krause emphasises that the decorative programmes at Saint-Cloud deliberately differed from the more state-oriented decoration at Versailles. While Charles Le Brun staged the rule and political triumphs of Louis XIV there, Saint-Cloud was dominated by the more playful, mythologically inspired visual language of Pierre Mignard.^[16]

For precisely this reason, Saint-Cloud is particularly interesting in the history of Versailles. The Galerie d’Apollon existed before the famous Galerie des Glaces and was greatly admired by contemporaries. It was not a direct “model” for the Hall of Mirrors in the strict sense, but it was an early, high-ranking gallery space within the courtly culture of representation in which Versailles would also ultimately take shape.

The idea that Saint-Cloud may have posed a certain challenge to Louis XIV is plausible, but should be expressed with caution. Like Vaux-le-Vicomte before it, the residence of the Duke of Orléans demonstrated how sensitive the king could be to competing forms of aristocratic representation. Monsieur's strong integration into court life at Versailles also corresponded to the king's political aim of binding the highest-ranking members of the nobility to the court and limiting their independence.^[17]

Unlike Versailles, Saint-Cloud, despite its splendour, remained more strongly shaped by the idea of an aristocratic maison de plaisance. The estate combined courtly representation with openness to the landscape and allowed Monsieur a freer and more private court life. Krause particularly emphasises the effect of the topographical position above the Seine: instead of a strictly flat monumentality, Saint-Cloud created a dynamic combination of architecture, terraces, garden art and landscape.^[18]

This freer, more strongly landscape-oriented side of Saint-Cloud is particularly tangible through Élisabeth-Charlotte d'Orléans, Madame Palatinate, better known in german as Liselotte of the Palatinate. Since her marriage to Philippe I d’Orléans in 1671, she was permanently associated with the château and became one of the most important contemporary voices on life at the residence of the House of Orléans.^[19] In her letters, Saint-Cloud appears not merely as a representative château, but as a preferred place of residence that offered her greater personal freedom than Versailles, a closer relationship with the landscape and a less oppressive court atmosphere.^[20]

Liselotte's extensive correspondence is of exceptional value today for the study of the Château de Saint-Cloud. Her letters convey not only impressions of everyday court life and the social tensions at the court of Louis XIV, but also document the use of the apartments, the atmosphere of the residence, the gardens and life within the House of Orléans with unusual immediacy.^[21] A considerable proportion of these letters was written during her stays at Saint-Cloud and is now among the most important ego-documents of French court life in the late seventeenth century.^[22]

After the death of Philippe I d’Orléans, Saint-Cloud remained in the possession of the House of Orléans for decades. At the same time, the French kings regularly used the château for hunting stays and court journeys. The well-developed château provided the royal family and larger hunting parties with comfortable accommodation.

It was not until 24 October 1784 that the estate once again came directly into the possession of the French Crown. Louis XVI. acquired it for his wife Marie-Antoinette from the then owner Louis-Philippe d’Orléans, known as “le Gros”, for the enormous sum of 6,000,000 livres. The duke had most recently used Saint-Cloud as a retreat following his morganatic marriage to Charlotte Jeanne Béraud de La Haye de Riou, Marquise de Montesson.

For Marie-Antoinette, Saint-Cloud had particular significance. Unlike Versailles, the château offered greater spatial freedom and more distance from the rigid ceremonies of court. Between 1787 and 1788 she had, in particular, the Corps-de-Logis and south wing enlarged and remodelled. The garden façades were given a contemporary appearance, new apartments were created and a new Chapelle Royale was also built. The architect responsible was Richard Mique, one of the most important architects in the queen's circle.

The alterations took place at a time of increasing political tension. Marie-Antoinette's costly building projects were increasingly interpreted as evidence of alleged extravagance. More recent research, however, views these rooms in a more differentiated way: Saint-Cloud represents not only luxury, but also the transformation of aristocratic domestic culture at the end of the Ancien Régime. Representative ceremonial rooms increasingly gave way to more private, comfortable and individualised forms of living.^[23]

The royal family was still staying at Saint-Cloud from time to time in 1790. A secret meeting between Marie-Antoinette and the Comte de Mirabeau took place there. The eloquent deputy of the Third Estate, president of the Jacobin Club and later president of the National Assembly, offered his services to the court in return for financial guarantees. Although the queen distrusted him, the meeting in the park of Saint-Cloud vividly demonstrates the extent to which this place had also become a space of political uncertainty during the final years of the monarchy.

Even after the French Revolution, Saint-Cloud remained an important residence of French rulers. During the coup of 18 Brumaire Year VIII, Napoléon Bonaparte had the Council of Five Hundred dissolved there, thereby initiating the end of the Directory. On 18 May 1804, his proclamation as Emperor of the French finally took place at the Château de Saint-Cloud.

The architectural changes under Napoléon I were comparatively moderate. Nevertheless, Saint-Cloud increasingly acquired the character of an imperial residence. Among other changes, a new throne room was created in the Salle de Vénus. Under Napoléon III., too, the château once again played a central role. The emperor regularly held court there together with Empress Eugénie.

Eugénie had several apartments and salons adapted to the taste of the Second Empire. Particularly characteristic was the conversion of the historic room of Henriette d’Angleterre, the first wife of Philippe I d’Orléans, into a Louis-seize-style salon. At the same time, the changes commissioned under Napoléon III actually reduced the overall complex: in 1862 he had the Orangerie adjoining the Corps-de-Logis to the north-west since Mansart's extensions, as well as the Salle de Théâtre, demolished.

A description from 1864 illustrates the enormous scale of the estate shortly before its destruction. The park covered 392 hectares. In addition to the apartments of the emperor and empress, the château and outbuildings contained 45 appartements de maître, 600 suites, stabling for 232 horses, sheds for 20 carriages, and a guard corps of 180 infantrymen and 34 cavalrymen. In addition, there was the Gardes du Corps barracks with a further 1,500 infantrymen and 150 cavalrymen.^[24]

Thus, until immediately before 1870, Saint-Cloud was not merely a historical memory, but a functioning residence of imperial rank. Its destruction therefore meant not only the loss of an old château, but the disappearance of a political and courtly centre that was still in use.

From Saint-Cloud, Napoléon III declared war on the Prussian king Wilhelm I. on 28 July 1870. During the Franco-Prussian War, Prussian and Bavarian troops occupied the heights around Paris on 19 September 1870 and used the Château de Saint-Cloud as their headquarters.

On 13 October 1870, during the fighting around Châtillon, this position came under sustained heavy bombardment from the defenders of Paris stationed on Mont Valérien. The château was hit and caught fire. Because fighting was still continuing, it was impossible to extinguish the flames; the entire building, with all three wings, burned down to its foundations.

The fire destroyed not only the buildings themselves, but also the artistic furnishings of the salons, apartments and state rooms. Panelling, stucco work, sculptures and precious ceiling paintings from several centuries were destroyed, including the decoration of the famous Galerie d’Apollon. Only a few pieces from the inventory survived because Empress Eugénie had prudently placed them in safety after the declaration of war.^[25]

The burnt-out ruin remained standing for about another twenty years. Without roofs or intermediate floors, it was exposed to the weather and steadily deteriorated. In 1891, the remaining walls were finally demolished. Nevertheless, individual architectural fragments of the Château de Saint-Cloud survived. The pediment of the north wing passed via Clémentine d’Orléans, a daughter of Louis-Philippe I, to the Bulgarian Crown Prince and later Tsar Ferdinand I, who incorporated it into his summer residence Euxinograd on the Black Sea.^[26] Apparently, a pediment from the south wing also survived and is now located at the Parc et Château de Jeurre in the Île-de-France. Several historic architectural fragments from French château estates were incorporated into its park architecture during the nineteenth century.^[27]

Seven surviving figures from the former façade decoration are also of particular importance. Seven statues attributed to the sculptor Guillaume Cadaine and to the sculptor Philippe I. d’Orléans survived the fire, looting and the later demolition of the ruins. The allegorical figures include Mercure, Bacchus and the Muses Calliope and Terpsichore and originally formed part of the decorative programme of the Château de Saint-Cloud. Although the damaged sculptures were partly mutilated and vandalised after the fire of 1870, they escaped being sold for their material when the ruins were finally demolished in 1892.^[28]

Today, these figures are held in the historic collections and museum of the Domaine nationale de Saint-Cloud. They are among the last directly preserved remains of the destroyed château and therefore possess exceptional documentary value for reconstructing the lost estate.^[29]

Only foundations and remnants of terraces of the Château de Saint-Cloud survive today. The château itself has almost completely disappeared from the townscape. What has survived, by contrast, is the extensive historic park, today the Domaine nationale de Saint-Cloud. With its terraces, fountains, cascades, water features, vistas and statues, the estate remains one of the most significant garden ensembles in France.

It is precisely this contrast that makes Saint-Cloud so remarkable today: while the château has disappeared, much of the large-scale garden and landscape architecture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has survived. The Domaine nationale therefore still conveys an impression of the former scale and representational impact of the residence.

Efforts to reconstruct the Château de Saint-Cloud continue to this day. In particular, the French Association Reconstruisons Saint-Cloud has been campaigning for the rebuilding of the estate for many years. The project forms part of a wider debate about reconstruction, heritage conservation and how to deal with lost architecture. Digital reconstruction projects and virtual models are now also attempting to make the vanished estate at least partly accessible again.^[30]

Sources and Bibliography Used, Among Others

[1] Queen Victoria, cited in: Pages du journal de la reine Victoria : souvenirs d’un séjour à Paris en 1855, Paris, Le Promeneur, 2008, p. 136.

[2] See Association Reconstruisons Saint-Cloud, historical account of the early history of Saint-Cloud and the development of the name from Novigentum through Nogent to Saint-Cloud.

[3] Katharina Krause, Die Maison de plaisance. Landhäuser in der Île-de-France (1660–1730), Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich/Berlin 1996, pp. 96–109.

[4] Ibid., pp. 96–97.

[5] Ibid., pp. 97–101.

[6] Élie Brackenhoffer, Voyage en France 1643–1644; Abraham Gölnitz, Le Dauphiné et la Maurienne au XVIIe siècle. Extraits du voyage d’Abraham Gölnitz; John Evelyn, The Diary of John Evelyn.

[7] See the travel accounts by Brackenhoffer, Gölnitz and Evelyn concerning the furnishings and perception of Saint-Cloud before Barthélemy Hervart's major alterations.

[8] Claude Dulong, Banquier du roi : Barthélemy Hervart (1606–1676), Paris 1951.

[9] Daniel Dessert, Argent, pouvoir et société au Grand Siècle, Paris, Fayard 1984; Claude Dulong, Mazarin et l’argent : banquiers et prête-noms, Paris 2002.

[10] Katharina Krause, Die Maison de plaisance. Landhäuser in der Île-de-France (1660–1730), Munich/Berlin 1996, pp. 101–105.

[11] Michel Jean, Les architectes de l’eau en Provence. De la Renaissance au XXe siècle, Actes Sud, Arles 2011; Raphaël Morera, L’assèchement des marais en France au XVIIe siècle, Rennes 2011.

[12] See the historical account of Barthélemy Hervart's building phase; for the interpretation of the early building phases, see Krause, Die Maison de plaisance, pp. 101–105.

[13] Bernard Chevallier, Le Palais de Saint-Cloud, Éditions du Patrimoine / Centre des Monuments Nationaux, Paris 2015, p. 4.

[14] Ibid., p. 4.

[15] Ibid., p. 4.

[16] Katharina Krause, Die Maison de plaisance. Landhäuser in der Île-de-France (1660–1730), Munich/Berlin 1996, pp. 106–109.

[17] Norbert Elias, Die höfische Gesellschaft. Untersuchungen zur Soziologie des Königtums und der höfischen Aristokratie, Frankfurt am Main 1983, especially pp. 87–148.

[18] Katharina Krause, Die Maison de plaisance. Landhäuser in der Île-de-France (1660–1730), Munich/Berlin 1996, pp. 97–101.

[19] Dirk Van der Cruysse, Madame sein ist ein ellendes Handwerck. Liselotte von der Pfalz – eine deutsche Prinzessin am Hof des Sonnenkönigs, Munich 2010.

[20] Wilhelm Ludwig Holland (ed.), Liselotte von der Pfalz. Briefe der Herzogin Elisabeth Charlotte von Orléans aus den Jahren 1676–1722, Stuttgart 1874–1881.

[21] Sigrid von der Gönna, “Liselotte von der Pfalz und ihre Briefe als Quelle höfischer Alltagsgeschichte”, in: Francia 31 (2004), pp. 135–158.

[22] See the Heidelberg Historical Collections – digital edition of Liselotte of the Palatinate's letters, Heidelberg University Library.

[23] See Krause on aristocratic residential and leisure culture in French country residences, Die Maison de plaisance, pp. 96–97 and 103–105.

[24] Contemporary description of the estate from 1864, cited from the historical account of the Château de Saint-Cloud.

[25] See Bernard Chevallier, Le Palais de Saint-Cloud, Paris 2015; also contemporary views, photographs and nineteenth-century inventories documenting the lost interiors.

[26] See Bernard Chevallier, Le Palais de Saint-Cloud, Paris 2015; for the present survival of architectural fragments, see also the historical interpretation provided by the Domaine nationale de Saint-Cloud.

[27] See the historical account at the Parc et Château de Jeurre concerning the reuse of historic architectural fragments, as well as comparable references in research on the later history of French château architecture in the nineteenth century.

[28] See the Domaine nationale de Saint-Cloud for information on the surviving statues from the former façade decoration and the later history of the château fragments.

[29] See the historical collections and museum interpretation of the Domaine nationale de Saint-Cloud concerning the surviving sculptures and fragments of the destroyed Château de Saint-Cloud.

[30] See the current interpretation projects of the Domaine nationale de Saint-Cloud concerning the château's culture of remembrance, as well as the efforts of Association Reconstruisons Saint-Cloud towards reconstruction.

To the sources and bibliography