Chateau de Courtomer, French chateau to rent in Normandy

The chateau de Courtomer was one of the last great chateaux built in France. Finished in 1789 on the eve of the French Revolution, it was built by the Marquis de Courtomer and his architect, the royal favorite Jean-Baptiste Benoît de Blinnes. Inspired by the chateau de Versailles, it is a monument to the Ancien Régime, a way of life and a system of privilege that ended conclusively with the execution of the French king Louis XVI in 1793. The chateau’s owner, wife and mother-in-law almost met the same fate during the Great Terror and its wave of executions, but were freed from prison and seem to have calmly gone home to finish the decoration of Courtomer in 1794. Despite their pains, the chateau was pillaged by counter-revolutionaries in 1799…but with the rise in power of Napoleon, the family was once again firmly established in the corridors of power. The marquis, Antoine de Saint-Simon, became chamberlain to the Empress Marie-Louise, Napoleon Bonaparte’s second wife.

But though the present-day chateau was an 18th-century construction, it was built upon the site of the 11th-century stronghold of the barons of Courtomer. The barons served the kings of France in war and many paid the ultimate price: Jean-Antoine de Saint Simon and four of his sons were killed in battle in the 1600s, and are buried beneath the pavement of the Protestant temple. The fact that the temple also served as a monument to these soldiers preserved it from destruction after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1687. The Marquis, summoned to explain why there was still a Protestant temple on the grounds of his chateau after Protestantism had been outlawed, explained that it was merely a funerary monument…and his successors claimed it was a dairy. The current “habitacle”, as the temple is locally known, was later transformed into a pigeonnier and then into stabling for stallions. The current owners are restoring the temple’s unusual roof and opening the arched windows, long filled in with brick and stone.

The chateau is situated in the Orne region of Normandy, along an ancient Roman road that leads to the English Channel. This part of Normandy was strongly tied to England…at first because both were Roman provinces, later because the early Christian church sent missions from Norman monasteries to Christianize the Saxon and Danish invaders of England…and later still, of course, because after 1066 , the dukes of Normandy were also the kings of England.

The 19th-century saw the Saint Simon family turn from war to literature…the orphaned Leontine de Saint Simon, heir to the last Marquis of Courtomer, married  Astolphe Louis-Leonor, the Marquis de Custine, a writer and friend of Honore de Balzac and of Francois-René de Chateaubriand, the father of the French Romantic movement. Chateaubriand, known for his romantic novels and his perceptive criticism of the Revolution, was the lover of Custine’s mother (Custine’s father had been guillotined at the Revolution). A frequent visitor to the household at Courtomer, Chateaubriand was the godfather of Leontine and Astolphe’s son.

The couple, childless, left the chateau to close relatives, the Turenne d’Aynac, and from thence Courtomer passed into the family of the vicomtes de Brimont and the comtes de Pelet. The current owners purchased the chateau in 2005.