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Chateau de Neuilly
The castle of Neuilly was at Neuilly-sur-Seine.
The area covered a vast Park of 170 acres called "park of Neuilly" which included any part of Neuilly ranging between the avenue of Rolls and the town of Levallois-Perret. This unit had been divided into two very unequal parts on which two castles had been built: The castle of Villiers in the east, seems to have been only one large middle-class house, with 24 parts and a beautiful garden separated by a palisade from the park of Neuilly itself. This property was finally attached to the preceding one in the early nineteenth century; * The castle of Neuilly, in the west, had been built in 1751, with the site of construction dating from the middle of the seventeenth century, for the count d' Argenson, Secretary of State for War of Louis XV, who had acquired the property in 1741. Decorated of an Ionic order and raised on several terraces dominating the Seine, the building was designed by the architect Jean-Sylvain Cartaud. After the French Revolution, the castle belonged to Radix de Sainte-Foy, who sold it in beginning of 1792 to Ms. de Montesson. Under the Consulate, the latter sold it to businessmen Delannoy and Vandenberghe who rented it like a second home to Talleyrand, who gave splendid festivals before selling it to Murat at the beginning of 1804. The latter also acquired the castle of Villiers and joins together the two fields. There was important work and expansions, in particular adding two wings to the main Palace and gave sumptuous feasts as at the time of the crowning of Napoleon king of' Italy in 1805. Murat become king of Naples (1808), all his possessions were gathered together in the area of the crown. The princess, Pauline Borghèse, Sister of the emperor, then accepted the property for staffing and she also gave superb festivals. In 1814, the area was returned to the Crown. July 16, 1819, it was acquired by the Duke of Orleans, future Louis-Philippe in exchange for Chartres, located at the street of Saint-Thomas of the Louvre, which belonged to him. He transformed the castle by Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine and expanded the area by the acquisition of 7 small islands in the middle of the Seine which he connected to the castle by a bridge wire to be able to reach the island known today under the name of Island of Love ? where he transfered the "Temple of Love", that his father Philippe-Equality, then duke of Chartres, had set up in 1774 at the Park Monceau (known as the "folly of Chartres") in Paris (V Île of the Bowl). The family of Orleans liked the castle of Neuilly particularly, where it took its neighborhood's summer's well. With its long and low buildings, it retained a discretion which suited the middle-class monarchy. The park, for the greatest part in grove, was surrounded by a high enclosing wall which concealed it from sight. At the time of the revolution of 1848, the castle was burned and looted on February 25, 1848. Only one of the wings built by Murat remained, occupied today by the Congregation of Sisters of Saint-Thomas Villeneuve (52, boulevard of Argenson). Confiscated by Napoleon III in 1852 with the assets of the house of Orleans, the park was divided into 700 lots which, after the creation of seven boulevards of 30 meters wide and nine streets limited to 15 meters of width, which were the object of successive auctions from 1854.
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