Parc du Château de Compiègne

Different gardens have been created since the 16th century around the castle... When Louis XV decided to rebuild the castle, he asked the architect Jacques-Ange Gabriel to think about a garden project. The garden designed by Gabriel, with its five terraces and its parterres de broderies, was never completed. The quincunxes of lime trees that frame the garden and a small round pool originally laid out on Marie-Antoinette's terrace, later moved to the center of the Rose Garden, remain from this project. From 1810, the Emperor entrusted the architect Berthault with the management of the exterior spaces. The will of the Emperor is to "link, as soon as possible, the palace with the forest, which is the real garden and which constitutes all the pleasure of this residence". Berthault created a large park of 700 hectares linking the garden to the forest: the famous "allée des Beaux-Monts" and the "berceau de Marie-Louise" (Marie-Louise's cradle), a set of green trellises in the shape of a cradle that leads to the heart of the forest. The garden of the Château de Compiègne, as conceived by Gabriel in 1755, did not include a precise plan for the installation of sculpted works. Two first statues were installed at the top of the ramp, the wounded Philoctetes by Dupaty and the Venus of the Capitol by Chinard, during the First Empire, under the direction of L.-M. Berthault. Today, the garden of the Château de Compiègne has about thirty sculpted works. They come from salons or private commissions. The only exception is the last sculpture installed, in 1869, an Andromeda by Clesinger, George Sand's nephew. Some of the works are original, but the park also hosts many copies of the antique like the Venus Genitrix by Barthélémy Frison or the Venus of the Capitol by Joseph Chinard.