Château de Beauregard was a

château A château (, ; plural: châteaux) is a manor house, or palace, or residence of the lord of the manor, or a fine country house of nobility or gentry, with or without fortifications, originally, and still most frequently, in French-speaking re ...

La Celle-Saint-Cloud La Celle-Saint-Cloud () is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France region in Northern France. It is a western outer suburb of Paris, from its centre, on the departmental border with Hauts-de-Seine. In 2021, it had a popula ...

, a suburb southwest of

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

, France, north of

Versailles The Palace of Versailles ( ; ) is a former royal residence commissioned by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, Yvelines, Versailles, about west of Paris, in the Yvelines, Yvelines Department of Île-de-France, Île-de-France region in Franc ...

History

The name of the domain seems to have its roots in the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...

. The château was built on top of a hill between La Celle-Saint-Cloud and

Le Chesnay Le Chesnay () is a former commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France region in north-central France. On 1 January 2019, it was merged into the new commune Le Chesnay-Rocquencourt. It is located in the western suburbs of Paris, fr ...

. In the early 17th century, the house was owned by the du Val family. Later, the château was the property of the Montaigu family, which rented it. During the Revolution and Empire eras, ownership of the château changed often. In the mid 19th century, Harriet Howard bought the house and its park. She also bought the Béchevet farm and the Bel-Ébat stud farm, marking a very large 184 ha property. The château was in poor condition; she rebuilt it in a neo-classical style. She also enclosed the whole area with a wall. From this château, she worked for the success of

Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte Napoleon III (Charles-Louis Napoléon Bonaparte; 20 April 18089 January 1873) was President of France from 1848 to 1852 and then Emperor of the French from 1852 until his deposition in 1870. He was the first president, second emperor, and last ...

(later Napoleon III), of whom she was mistress and financial backer. She died in 1865. Her son Martin-Constantin Haryett, created comte de Béchevet by Napoléon III, was a spendthrift and had to sell the château in 1870 to the duchesse de Beauffremont. A few months later, the

Franco-Prussian War The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the War of 1870, was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the North German Confederation led by the Kingdom of Prussia. Lasting from 19 July 1870 to 28 Janua ...

broke out. The Prussians, installed in La Celle-Saint-Cloud, made Beauregard their headquarters and built some fortifications. The duchesse de Beauffremont was ruined and was not able to rehabilitate it, and the house was seized. In 1872, it became the property of baron

Maurice de Hirsch Moritz Freiherr von Hirsch auf Gereuth (; ; 9 December 1831 – 21 April 1896), commonly known as Maurice de Hirsch, was a German Jewish financier and philanthropist who set up charitable foundations to promote Jewish education and improve the ...

, who fully restored it. Although having a town house in rue de l'Élysée in Paris, he and his family frequently stayed at Beauregard. At his death in 1896, the château was bequeathed to Maurice Arnold de Forest, comte de Bendern (Liechtenstein title). He owned several properties across Europe and did not come often to Beauregard, leaving the château abandoned. In 1939, there was a plan to install an auxiliary hospital, but the poor condition of the château did not allow it. It then became a military depot and was bombed in 1940. During the Occupation, the

organisation Todt Organisation Todt (OT; ) was a Civil engineering, civil and military engineering organisation in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, named for its founder, Fritz Todt, an engineer and senior member of the Nazi Party. The organisation was responsible ...

used it as a base, and then it became an annex of the Fresnes prison and a Soviet repatriation assembly camp. After the war, Beauregard was in ruins. Its owner, the comte de Bendern, thought to transform it into a forest reserve open to the public, but he was not able to do it. He eventually gave Beauregard to the city of Paris in 1949 for social housing. In 1956, the château ruins were cleared. Only the front-core (front door) still stands (but very deteriorated), surrounded by a group of buildings built in the late 1960s in the so-called Beauregard neighborhood, north of the A13 motorway.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Beauregard, Chateau de Châteaux in Yvelines