Hunting horns at the Chateau de Chantilly

The Chateau de Chantilly was owned by some of the greatest names in French royal history. One the Constable Anne de Montmorency was taken prisoner at Pavia with Francis I, and opposed the Guises in the French Wars of Religion.

In 1643 Queen Anne of Austria gave Chantilly to the Princess de Conde. Her son the Great Conde was a mighty warrior who used Le Notre and Mansart, who as a limbering-up exercise for Versailles, to transform the park and chateau.

During the Revolution the Condes were in exile and the chateau and its contents were seized and parts demolished for hard-core.

In 1815 the family returned and it passed to the Orleans family and the son the Louis Phillipe, who became King after the 1830 Revolution.

The Duc de Aumale was governor of Algeria and spent little time there until his father was in turn expelled in the 1848 Revolution. He went into exile in Twickenham at Orleans House and his father at Claremont in Esher, kindly provided by Queen Victoria.
Returning in 1870 he rebuilt the Chateau as a 19th Century imitation of what a Renaissance Chateau should look like. He also amassed the second best collection of art in France outside the Louvre - Raphaels,Ingres, Poussin, Les Tres Riche Heures de Duc de Berry etc etc

These he left to the French State having lost his sons; and it is now a magnificent museum with a nice line in cream (Creme de Chantilly)