page_title: Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart, Marquise de Montespan
section_title: Château de Clagny
hierarchical_section_title: Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart, Marquise de Montespan / Legacy / Château de Clagny
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Plan du château et des jardins de Clagny dessiné par Maraine, XVIIe siècle
context_page_description: Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart de Mortemart, Marquise of Montespan, better known as Madame de Montespan, was the most celebrated maîtresse-en-titre of King Louis XIV of France, by whom she had seven children.
  Born into one of the oldest noble families of France, the House of Rochechouart, Madame de Montespan was called by some the "true Queen of France"' during her romantic relationship with Louis XIV, due to the pervasiveness of her influence at court during that time. Her so-called "reign" lasted from around 1667, when she first danced with Louis XIV at a ball hosted by the king's younger brother, Philippe I, Duke of Orléans, at the Louvre Palace, until her alleged involvement in the notorious Affaire des Poisons in the late 1670s to 1680s. Her immediate contemporary was Barbara Villiers, mistress of King Charles II of England.
  She is an ancestress of several royal houses in Europe, including those of Spain, Italy, Bulgaria, Portugal, Belgium, and Luxembourg.
context_section_description: The Château de Clagny in Versailles was built between 1674 and 1680 from the drawings of Jules Hardouin-Mansart, Premier architecte du Roi, (First architect of the King), on land bought by Louis XIV in 1665. Madame de Sévigné wrote that its construction employed 1,200 workers and the cost was no less than 2 million "livres". The royal gardener André Le Nôtre created the gardens, which looked west toward the much larger palace of Versailles, of which Clagny was a smaller version.  The château de Clagny was also famed for its gallery. In 1685, Louis XIV gave the magnificent palace to Madame de Montespan.  At her death, Clagny was inherited by her oldest son, the duc du Maine, who, in turn, passed it on to his son, Louis-Auguste de Bourbon, prince de Dombes. The château reverted to the French crown in 1766 and was demolished in 1769.
caption: A plan of the Château de Clagny and its gardens
exif: {}