The Château de Saint-Hubert was a royal

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 ...

built by order of

Louis XV Louis XV (15 February 1710 – 10 May 1774), known as Louis the Beloved (), was King of France from 1 September 1715 until his death in 1774. He succeeded his great-grandfather Louis XIV at the age of five. Until he reached maturity (then defi ...

in Perray-in-Yvelines (now in the department of

Yvelines Yvelines () is a department in the western part of the Île-de-France region in Northern France. In 2019, it had a population of 1,448,207.hunting Hunting is the Human activity, human practice of seeking, pursuing, capturing, and killing wildlife or feral animals. The most common reasons for humans to hunt are to obtain the animal's body for meat and useful animal products (fur/hide (sk ...

in the nearby forest ( Saint Hubert is the

patron saint A patron saint, patroness saint, patron hallow or heavenly protector is a saint who in Catholicism, Anglicanism, Eastern Orthodoxy or Oriental Orthodoxy is regarded as the heavenly advocate of a nation, place, craft, activity, class, clan, fa ...

of hunters). The design was entrusted to Ange-Jacques Gabriel, designer of the

École Militaire École or Ecole may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * Éco ...

, and the building was under construction from 1755 to 1758. Saint-Hubert was originally intended as a simple hunting lodge, to allow the King to rest during and after the hunt without calling on his cousin, Louis Jean Marie de Bourbon, Duke of Penthièvre. Work was not completed by 1756, and it was decided to turn Saint-Hubert into a full château, with a main building housing 25 nobles, plus two projecting service wings and a gatehouse creating a courtyard. The main room was elaborately decorated with painted

stucco Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and ...

. The building was still not completed by the death of Louis XV, and

Louis XVI Louis XVI (Louis-Auguste; ; 23 August 1754 – 21 January 1793) was the last king of France before the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution. The son of Louis, Dauphin of France (1729–1765), Louis, Dauphin of France (son and heir- ...

abandoned it as too expensive. Instead, he bought the

Château de Rambouillet The Château de Rambouillet (), also known in English as the Castle of Rambouillet, is a château in the town of Rambouillet, Yvelines department, in the region in northern France, southwest of Paris. It was the summer residence of the Presi ...

from the Duke of Penthièvre. Saint-Hubert then fell into disrepair and was demolished in 1855. Little remains today. Louis XV had planned a

model village A model village is a mostly self-contained community, built from the late 18th century onwards by landowners and business magnates to house their workers. "Model" implies an ideal to which other developments could aspire. Although the villages ...

around the Château de Saint-Hubert, but it also was never completed. A painting by Charles-André van Loo ordered in 1758 for the chapel at Saint-Hubert, ''The conversion of Saint-Hubert'' is now housed in the église Saint-Lubin-et-Saint-Jean in

Rambouillet Rambouillet (, , ) is a Subprefectures in France, subprefecture of the Yvelines Departments of France, department in the Île-de-France Regions of France, region of France. It is located beyond the outskirts of Paris, southwest of its Kilometr ...

References

*''Translated from the equivalent article at French Wikipédia, 12 February 2006'' Saint-Hubert Saint-Hubert {{DEFAULTSORT:Chateau de Saint-Hubert