Vaux-le-Vicomte, Classical French château in Maincy, France
Vaux-le-Vicomte is a palace in Maincy, northern France, that served as a model for Versailles. The central salon with its oval dome opens on both sides to formal gardens with geometric parterres and water features, while two symmetrical wings house living quarters and chambers.
Nicolas Fouquet hired three artists in 1656 to create the estate that made the French king jealous. The lavish party of 1661 led to Fouquet's arrest just three weeks later, and Louis XIV recruited the same masters for Versailles.
The name comes from Fouquet's title, Viscount of Vaux, which he gained by buying the seigneurial lands in 1641. The 17 August 1661 fête staged Molière's Les Fâcheux for the first time, with a dinner organised by François Vatel and fireworks; Voltaire later wrote that Fouquet was "the King of France" at six that evening and nobody by two in the morning. The Chambre des Muses ceiling by Charles Le Brun's workshop was restored in 2016–2017 and first shown to the public in March 2017.
The garden's main axis runs from the entrance forecourt down to the grand canal, with terraces and parterres on either side; the ground is gravel and uneven in places. The estate covers 1,235 acres, so allow time to walk between the château, the canal and the grottes à arcades.
The palace was the first to offer a perfectly axial view from the entrance gate to the far garden boundary. The reflections in the main canal double the entire composition and create an optical illusion of infinite depth.
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