Château de Rottembourg, Château in Montgeron, France

Château de Rottembourg is a former estate and monastery in Montgeron, Essonne. Its oldest wing, facing the park, dates from the early 18th century and has a basement, three upper floors and a mezzanine under a shallow pitched roof with a central triangular pediment. A balustraded outdoor staircase leads to the ground floor on the garden side. The grounds were reshaped into an English landscape park with artificial grottoes and ponds.

The house existed by the early 1700s, with grounds running from the present avenue de la République to the river Yerres. In 1823 it was bought by General Henry de Rottembourg, and in 1922 the owners gave it to Carmelite nuns from Saint-Denis.

The château's name comes from General Henri Rottembourg, who bought it in 1823 and lived there until 1857; the square by the parish church is now called Place de Rottembourg. In 1876 Ernest Hoschedé commissioned Claude Monet to paint four decorative panels for the salon: Turkeys, Pond in Montgeron, Garden Corner in Montgeron and The Hunt. Turkeys shows the garden façade, then reddish. Monet married Alice Hoschedé in 1892.

The estate sits close to a railway line, so the gardens are divided by tracks and the setting is more compact than it once was. You can view the main front and the remaining grounds from outside, and the area is easy to reach from central Montgeron.

Monet painted a hunting scene called La Chasse in the nearby forest while staying here, which helped him move toward his later nature series. The château is now a retirement home for priests, a use that few visitors expect from a building with such a strong artistic link.