Château des Rochers Sévigné
HOME OF THE MARQUISE DE SÉVIGNÉ
Just like Madame de Sévigné, you are sure to fall for the timeless beauty of this estate!
With its high rooftops and towers, the Château des Rochers stands proudly in the middle of a vast wooded park full of mysterious pathways. The château, which had belonged to the Sévigné family since 1410, was rebuilt in the 1480s. Madame de Sévigné (1626–1696), famous for her letters written during the reign of Louis XIV, discovered this Gothic-style medieval mansion in 1644, the year she was married. She immediately fell in love with it. During her many stays there, she wrote 294 letters, mainly to her daughter, the Countess of Grignan, which accounts for one-fourth of her surviving work. Generations have come and gone, but her memory still lives on in the house and its surroundings.
THE ROCHERS SÉVIGNÉ MUSEUM
The intimate nature of the writer’s home is evident in the museum, which opened to the public in 1884. You enter the museum through the former orangery, an elegant building from the 1690s. Madame de Ségivné, in the form of a beautiful plaster statue, welcomes you, inviting you to discover the exhibition devoted to her. Numerous portraits tell her story, taking you back to the Grand Siècle, from Place Royale in Paris, where she was born, to the place of her death in Provence, Château de Grignan… After leaving the orangery, stroll through the French-style garden created in 1690 by landscape architect André Le Nôtre. After a guided tour of the chapel built in 1671, you’ll enter the tower, where two rooms contain items the writer treasured. Portraits of her loved ones, her own portrait, her personal care items and writing things are displayed as they would have been in her day. You truly feel as if you have entered her world.
