Our favourite ! Comtesse du Barry’s music pavilion and her musical “gatherings”

Formerly a farming village specialising in vines and fruit trees, Louveciennes was radically transformed at the end of the 17^th century with the creation of the Marly estate and the construction of the Machine de Marly.  Water drawn from the River Seine was piped to the aqueduct at Louveciennes, finally pouring forth into the pools and ponds of Marly and Versailles.
From the 18^th century on, several châteaux were built nearby at Voisins, Beauséjour and Prunay.  Louveciennes was by this time less of a village than a collection of twelve or so châteaux, connected via a network to other properties.
In the 19^th century, with the arrival of the railway line to Saint-Nom-la-Bretèche, many of the bourgeois acquired properties, which became their “country” houses.  Louveciennes was turning into a highly artistic centre for literature, architecture, music and painting, and Impressionism in particular.  There are over 120 paintings by Renoir, Sisley, Pissarro and Monet of the town and its surrounding areas.  A large number of celebrities came here seeking the peace and tranquillity of the town, among them Maupassant, Proust, Leconte de Lisle, Camille Saint-Saëns and Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun.
In the 20^th century, Maréchal Joffre took up residence on the slopes of Louveciennes, in a property called La Chataigneraie, where he now lies buried.  Some other high-profile visitors are Charles Münch, the writer Anaïs Nin, the Comte de Paris and Julien Caïn.