What goes through your mind when someone tells you “this building was built during the 20th century”? Do you also picture, in your mind’s eye, an ugly box-shaped building made of concrete, iron and glass? If so, let me surprise you. Somewhere in the Poitou-Charentes region, there is a palace called Château de la Mercerie, whose design recalls the Palace of Versailles, and although it looks as if it was built during the 17th and 18th centuries, the vast majority of it was actually built between 1925 and 1975.
This is a unique palace with an amazing story, one that only opened to tourists in 2022, and today I’m happy to bring you its fascinating history, along with all the practical information for your visit. If you understand French, great, and if not, you can still enjoy it without the language: feel free to watch the short video below that tells the story of this special palace.
But if you don’t speak French, or you’d like to learn more about the palace’s story in depth, feel free to keep reading…
How Was Such a Beautiful Palace Built in the 20th Century?
This is the story of two brothers, Raymond (1901-1986) and Alphonse (1905-1983) Réthoré. The two brothers were born in the early 20th century: Raymond in 1901 and Alphonse in 1905.
These two brothers were completely different from one another. The elder was charismatic and good-looking, a people person, who would later become a successful politician. Alphonse, on the other hand, was sickly, didn’t care much for company, and preferred to keep to himself.
Shortly after their birth, misfortune began to strike them one after another. Their father died first, in 1905, shortly after Alphonse was born. A decade later, their elder brother died in a car accident. Their mother, who had remarried a wealthy doctor, died in 1924, and their stepfather died about a year later.
But every cloud has a silver lining, and in the case of these two brothers, this relentless string of deaths had one upside: they inherited a considerable amount of money.
What would you do if you came into a very large sum of money in your early twenties? The two brothers decided to invest their inheritance in buying an estate in a village with the intriguing name Magnac (or by its full name, Magnac-Lavalette-Villars). It was a Neo-Gothic style estate, built in the late 19th century on the ruins of an older estate that had once belonged to the Rousseau family.
One Builds, One Decorates
The inheritance the brothers received helped them not only buy an estate: in Alphonse’s case, it allowed him to fulfill himself and pursue what he loved most, architecture.
When Alphonse was young, his stepfather, who was a doctor, decided the boy should study medicine. Alphonse hated every minute of it, and the moment his stepfather died, he quit immediately. He spent his newfound free time studying classical architecture, with an emphasis on building in the style of ancient Greece and Rome. It’s worth noting that he never completed any formal studies in the field, and he had no real need to, but the knowledge he taught himself was immense.
During their first decade on the estate (1925-1935), the brothers invested in a massive renovation of the 19th-century building, but starting in 1939, Alphonse began building new wings. Construction continued steadily into the 1970s, and nothing, not even the Nazi occupation, really stopped the brothers from building one wing after another.
And so, while Alphonse worked away at planning and building, Raymond, the elder brother, flew around the world buying paintings and antique furniture to decorate the new rooms. As the years went by, Alphonse grew more and more obsessive about the construction, and the new château kept expanding, gradually “wrapping around” the original estate.
The reason for this is that Alphonse was an impatient man, and the moment he grew tired of a particular wing, he would simply move on to planning and building the next one. As a result, in almost every room you visit, something will always be missing (for example, a floor without flooring, or a column without a capital).
During the 1960s, the brothers decided to turn their château into a kind of Palace of Versailles, and Alphonse built a 220-meter-long facade in the Italian style. But he never bothered to build the rooms behind it, so when you visit the château, you’ll see a long, orphaned facade with nothing behind it (the facade even made it into the Guinness Book of Records for its length).
Château de la Mercerie Was Saved from Ruin and Rose Again
In 1983, Alphonse died, and with him died the plans to continue building the château. Since neither brother had ever married or had children, and since Raymond was no longer young, the question of inheritance arose. After much thought and hesitation, Raymond decided to leave the château to his secretary, Solange.
But fate had other plans, and a few weeks after it was announced that she would inherit the château, Solange died in a car accident. As a result, when Raymond died in 1986, it was her brother, Bernard Charrenac, who inherited the château.
Bernard did manage to survive until the long-awaited moment, but then he discovered that the château came with a debt of about 3 million francs, plus a hefty inheritance tax. Bernard had no choice but to sell the château in 1988 to another Bernard, an antiques collector named Bernard Steinitz, who intended to dismantle the château and move it, intact, to the United States, where it would be sold to a millionaire. But then the France government, which previously hadn’t shown much interest in the château, issued an order banning its demolition, and Mr. Steinitz’s plan fell through.
Since Bernard couldn’t carry out his plan, he abandoned the château. And so, over the next 20 years, the château stood empty and began to fall apart from neglect. In 2008, it was purchased, by mistake, by the insurance company Wolta (they were sure they were buying a different château, and only realized their mistake once they arrived at the site). Since the company had no use for a ruined château, it seemed that Château de la Mercerie was destined for a slow death.
But then a miracle happened. The mayor of Magnac presented the company with the following proposal: we will lease the place for 75 years for an annual payment of one euro. In exchange, we will renovate the château and operate it, so that by the end of the period, you’ll have a beautiful château instead of a pile of crumbling stones.
The contract was signed in 2011, and over the next decade the château was renovated by about 300 volunteers, some of whom also lead tours of the château. COVID delayed the opening to the general public, but luckily for me, the palace opened just as I was staying with Rotem and Uri in Brantôme. Since the château is only about a half-hour drive away, we decided to take the opportunity and head over there in the second half of the day.
A Visit to Château de la Mercerie
Before I tell you about what we saw, let’s start and finish with all the practical details.
- To get there, enter Château de la Mercerie into Waze.
- The place is open from April 10 to October 30 (as of 2022), in the afternoon hours (2:30-6:00 p.m.). Note, though, that the château often closes for private events (the guide told us that weddings are held there on weekends, while divorces happen there during the week :-)). So before you visit, I highly recommend checking the château’s website to make sure it won’t be closed, to avoid disappointment.
- The ticket price, as of 2022, is 10 euros per person (there are discounts for groups of 20 or more, but I doubt that’s relevant for most of you).
Now that you know how and when to get there, here are some of the things we saw during our tour:
The Azulejos Galleries (Galeries d’Azulejos)
The word azulejos means “small, polished stone,” and refers to white ceramic tiles from Portugal painted with images, usually in blue ink. This is a long-standing tradition rooted in the 15th century, and Raymond, who visited Portugal and was very impressed by what he saw, ordered these tiles from the Allelujah factory in the city of Aveiro.
The result is nothing short of spectacular: 32 wooden panels containing a series of paintings on ceramic, some of them enormous (the largest is 5 meters tall and 2.6 meters wide). The paintings are copies of works by important 18th-century painters, chief among them Claude-Joseph Vernet (1714-1789), who specialized in paintings of shipwrecks and landscapes featuring the ruins of ancient temples.
Raymond, who greatly admired the painter, asked the factory to reproduce some of Vernet’s paintings onto the ceramic tiles, and once everything was finished, several experts from the factory were sent straight to the château to install the paintings. The result, as you can see, is magnificent.
If that’s not enough for you, look up at the ceiling, and you’ll find a long series of paintings, most of them excellent copies of Renaissance and Baroque artworks, all framed within wooden panels.
The Vestibule (Le vestibule)
This dim room contains a beautiful fireplace that Raymond bought from Italy during the 1960s, made of Carrara marble.
The Vernet Salon (Salon Vernet)
This salon is named after a large Vernet painting that was bought from a collector living in Franco’s Spain. The fact that Spain had been boycotted by France due to its fascist regime didn’t really bother the two brothers. They sent the painter Adolfo Tagliaferi (1886-1965), who helped them a great deal with the interior design of the château, and he cut the painting into about thirty pieces, which he managed to smuggle out.
As you’ll see in the photo below, you can easily spot the seams between each section of the painting.
The Béruges Bedroom
Not much remains of the original bedroom, since those who inherited the château had to sell most of the furniture and artwork to cover the deceased’s debts.
But there is one very interesting thing you can find there. If you look closely, you’ll notice a beautiful wooden door next to the window.
Ask the guide to open it, and instead of another room, you’ll find a surprise: a closet full of erotic paintings!
As you can see, some of the paintings here are only sketches, since the brothers Raymond and Alphonse, as already mentioned, didn’t like finishing their projects. Still, there’s no doubt that both of them knew how to enjoy life.
Raymond’s Study
In this room, Raymond Réthoré ran his political career and his various business affairs.
As I mentioned earlier, Raymond Réthoré was a politician who achieved quite a bit of success in his life. He actually began his career on the left (apparently there’s no contradiction between being a socialist and living on a lavish estate), but over the years he moved to the right and became one of the close friends of Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970), whom he admired. Raymond was elected several times to the French National Assembly, and at the same time also served as mayor of the village of Magnac.
An interesting detail I learned: neither brother ever learned to drive. This didn’t bother Alphonse much, since he almost never left the estate. Raymond, however, used to travel around France quite a bit by… hitchhiking!
The Dining Room
This is one of the most beautiful rooms Alphonse designed. There’s a photo showing what the palace looked like right before renovations began, so you can appreciate just how impressive the work done here was. For some reason, I forgot to photograph it, so you’ll have to take my word for it that an enormous amount of work went into this room. Here’s what the dining room looks like today. Makes you hungry, doesn’t it?
Alphonse’s Library
This library housed an impressive collection of architecture books that inspired Alphonse while he built this palace. In 1985, about a year before his death, Raymond decided to donate the books to the library of Angoulême, so the books you’ll see today aren’t the original ones (the Angoulême library agreed to return them once the estate’s renovation is complete, so it’s quite possible that by the time you visit, you’ll find the original books there).
Raymond and Alphonse’s Bedrooms
Both bedrooms are located in the old estate that the brothers bought, and they were connected by a door. But to maintain privacy, the brothers decided to build an exterior stairwell and carve stone doorways, so the connecting door could be locked.
Raymond’s room is large and ornate, very fitting for his colorful personality. Take note of the impressive canopy bed, set within a wooden frame, bearing a quote from Victor Hugo (1802-1885).
By the way, this is also the only room in the palace with a bathroom. So where did Alphonse go when “nature called”? I was never able to get an answer to that important question.
From Raymond’s bedroom, you can pass into Alphonse’s. It’s more modest, but if you look up at the ceiling above his bed, you’ll find a dome containing copies of Renaissance paintings.
The Palace Gardens
After you finish visiting the palace itself, feel free to go outside and explore its extensive gardens. There, you’ll find a rose garden planted by Raymond, and of course, dozens of meters of unfinished facade.
If you don’t feel like walking, you can take the little train parked in front of the palace.
Either way, take your time, stroll around, and enjoy the lush green scenery and the slightly surreal sight of a giant, unfinished château. I’m sure that once you finish exploring, you’ll reach the same conclusion I did: there’s no shortage of châteaux in the Dordogne, but this one is truly unique, so it’s well worth adding to your itinerary.
Looking for More to Do Nearby?
Feel free to check out the Dordogne, Périgord and southwest France page, where you’ll find a series of articles about places that are, in some cases, just a short drive away.
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