Concept

Le Château d’Arc-en-Barrois is a private co-owned vacation home with 50 shares – one share assigned to each private room.

The Château combines the possibility of privacy in the individual rooms with the possibility of socializing in the common areas.

History

Since the Middle Ages, the château in Arc-en-Barrois has belonged to royal families and French nobility. During the revolution of 1789 part of the château was destroyed and later it was confiscated by the first republic. The château and its vast forests returned to the royal Bourbon-Penthièvre family in 1814, and in 1821 the sister of King Louis-Philippe (1830-1848), Princess Adélaïde d’Orléans, inherited the estate after their mother. Princess Adélaïde was one of the Kings closest advisers as well as the guardian of his son the Prince of Joinville.
Between 1844 and 1848, Princess Adélaïde rebuilt the château from 1650 into its current form to serve as a hunting castle. The Prince of Joinville inherited the château which remained the property of the Orleans family despite the fall of the monarchy in 1848. During World War I, the Duke of Penthiévre let the château serve as a British Red Cross temporary hospital for the wounded from the fronts at Argonne and Verdun and it was staffed with English, Canadian, American and Danish staff many of which were well-known writers and artists.