Today we took an excursion outside of Paris to visit the château de Vaux-le-Vicomte, a Baroque French château located 34 miles southeast of Paris, in the Seine-et-Marne department of the Île-de-France. We had made arrangements with Serge, our friend who operates a chauffeur service, to transport us to the château in the late morning, and then retrieve us around 3:00 PM for the return ride to Paris. Over the years, we have engaged his services for excursions to the palace and gardens of Versailles (2014), the Château de Sceaux (2017), and Monet’s former home and gardens in Giverny (2019). The château de Vaux-le-Vicomte was built between 1658 and 1661 for Nicolas Fouquet, the superintendent of finances for Louis XIV, and was an influential work of architecture in 17th-century Europe. Fouquet spent enormous sums, over a period
... read more
