Le Chateau d'Écouen

This past thursday, a friend and I got together with the goal of visiting the Chateau de Chantilly, ancestral home of the Condé family, and home to what is purportedly one of the best art collections outside of the Louvre. As it turned out, the Chateau's website had totally misled us into thinking we could take the RER (regional rail) there. In fact, we'd have to take one of the "grands lignes" and it would cost quite a pretty euro. So we decided to scrap the trip to Chantilly and save it for another day. Instead, my friend suggested the Chateau d'Écouen, which is reachable by regional rail. It turns out, the Chateau is the national museum of the Renaissance! So I was excited to go! We had both packed a lunch, and we headed out there. First, to get to the chateau from the train station, we had to walk through a forest. It was beautiful seeing all the leaves change, surrounding us with slightly different shades of green, yellow, orange and red. We got to the chateau. It was a gorgeous building--with a moat! However, it was closed until 2 (presumably for the workers' lunchbreak). So we took a seat and ate our own lunch. We took a stroll around the town. It was very quaint and charming but DEAD. Not a soul was out and about--and mind you, this wasn't during a Sunday. So we went back to the chateau and went inside. Both of us found the collections a bit odd. For having the prestigious name of national museum of the renaissance, the chateau had surprisingly little in it's collections. Also very few painting whatsoever. There were a few tapestries, some half-destroyed frescos, some jewelry (that was cool), and a LOT of ceramics. Honestly I was more impressed by the exterior of the chateau and it's picturesque surroundings than by the museum's collections. Another thing both of us found odd was, for a chateau, there were no displays of private apartments--bedrooms, living rooms,etc. That was disappointing. One of my favorite aspects of visiting an old home is to actually see how people used to live! Anyway, here are some photos of the chateau and some highlights of the collections. By all means I'm still very happy that I went!