Chateau de Chantilly
— the kind of stillness that doubles a building.
Not only on a wall.
“North of Paris, where the forest opens onto water, the Château de Chantilly sits twice: once on its island, once in its moat. The Petit Château survived the Revolution; the Grand Château was rebuilt by the Duke of Aumale in the 1870s to hold his paintings. Inside, the Musée Condé carries the second-largest collection of antique paintings in France after the Louvre. The gardens were drawn by André Le Nôtre. The Great Stables down the lawn are nearly as grand as the house, built for a prince who believed he would come back as a horse. On a still afternoon the water gets the whole building right.
Chateau de Chantilly, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
The Château de Chantilly sits in the town of Chantilly, in the Oise department of Hauts-de-France, about 40 kilometres north of Paris. It is reached in roughly 25 minutes by direct train from Gare du Nord to Chantilly-Gouvieux, then a short walk through the edge of the Forêt de Chantilly. The estate is part of the Domaine de Chantilly, a roughly 7,800-hectare property that includes the château, the Musée Condé, the Grandes Écuries, the Hippodrome, and one of the largest forests in the Île-de-France basin. The whole estate was left to the Institut de France by Henri d'Orléans, Duke of Aumale, whose 1886 deed of gift took effect at his death in 1897.
What stands today is two buildings joined as one. The Petit Château, built around 1560 by the architect Jean Bullant for the Constable Anne de Montmorency, survived the destruction of the original Grand Château during the French Revolution. The current Grand Château beside it was reconstructed between 1875 and 1882 by Honoré Daumet for Henri d'Orléans, Duke of Aumale, who returned from exile in England with one of the great private picture collections of the 19th century and wanted a house to hold it. The two châteaux share a single roofline above the moat and read, from the lawn, as one continuous façade.
A combined ticket covers the château, the Musée Condé, the Living Horse Museum in the Grandes Écuries, and the 115-hectare gardens drawn by André Le Nôtre between 1663 and 1684. The Domaine is open most of the year, with reduced hours in winter; the château and Musée Condé are typically closed on Tuesdays. The Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, one of the most celebrated illuminated manuscripts of the 15th century, lives in the Cabinet des Livres but is shown only in facsimile; the original is kept in climate-controlled storage. The forest and the hippodrome are reached on foot from the gates.