Château de Malmaison

• 1. Introduction

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  The Château de Malmaison was the headquarters of the French government from 1800 to 1802. It would also become Napoleon's last address in France before his final exile, in 1815. Both chapters of that history pivot on one person: Joséphine de Beauharnais. She bought the place in April 1799, while her husband was fighting in Egypt. He had no idea she was spending money he expected to bring home. The estate she acquired was a run-down property seven miles west of Paris. It lay in the commune of Rueil-Malmaison, set among nearly 150 acres of woods and meadows. What she did with those grounds would shape France's botanical history. And what happened to Malmaison after Joséphine was gone would test it through wars, vandalism, and decade after decade of changing ownership.

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• 2. 300,000 Francs

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  Bonaparte expressed fury when he discovered the price Joséphine had paid: well over 300,000 francs for a house that needed extensive renovation. The renovations cost her a fortune beyond that. Yet the estate became a source of genuine happiness for the Bonapartes. Joséphine's daughter, Hortense de Beauharnais, would call it "a delicious spot." Joséphine herself committed her ambitions to paper: she wished "that Malmaison may soon become the source of riches for all of France."

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• 3. Botanical Ambition

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  In 1800, Joséphine built a heated orangery at Malmaison capable of sheltering 300 pineapple plants. That scale gives a sense of what she had in mind. She had set herself the goal of transforming Malmaison into "the most beautiful and curious garden in Europe, a model of good cultivation." Rare and exotic plants arrived from around the world to fill the grounds.

  Five years after the orangery, in 1805, a greenhouse followed; it was kept warm by a dozen coal-burning stoves. The botanical effort had real consequences for France. From 1803 until her death in 1814, Joséphine was responsible for cultivating nearly 200 plant species in France for the first time.

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• 4. Roses and Redouté

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  Joséphine grew some 250 varieties of roses at Malmaison, gathering specimens from her native Martinique and from places across the world. To preserve a record of this collection, she commissioned the Belgian artist Pierre-Joseph Redouté, born in 1759, to paint her roses and her lilies.

  The foreword to Jardin de la Malmaison, published in 1803, praised Joséphine for gathering the rarest plants on French soil. It described the gardens as "an impressive reminder of the conquests of your illustrious husband." Redouté died in 1840, and the works he made at Malmaison remain in demand as prints to this day. The rose garden, though, was only one of Joséphine's living collections on the estate.

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• 5. A Living Menagerie

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  At the height of Joséphine's years at Malmaison, kangaroos roamed freely across the grounds alongside emus, black swans, zebras, sheep, and gazelles. Ostriches, chamois, a seal, antelopes, and llamas were also among the residents. These animals were not confined; Joséphine's approach was to let them move at will among the gardens. Some had arrived from the Baudin expedition. After her divorce from Napoléon, Joséphine received Malmaison in her own right, along with a pension of 5 million francs a year.

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• 6. An Estate's Afterlife

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  Joséphine remained at Malmaison until her death in 1814. Napoléon, defeated at the Battle of Waterloo the following year, returned briefly to the house. He then departed for his exile on the island of Saint Helena. With both of them gone, the estate entered a period of neglect. The house sat vacant at times, and both the building and its gardens were ransacked and vandalized. What remained of the garden was destroyed in fighting in 1870.

  In 1842, Queen Mother Maria Christina of Spain, widow of King Ferdinand VII, purchased Malmaison. She shared it with her second husband, Agustín Fernando Muñoz. Isabella II of Spain, Maria Christina's step-daughter, made him Duke of Riánsares in 1844. Maria Christina sold the estate in 1861 to Napoleon III, who was Joséphine's grandson through her daughter Hortense. The War of 1870 brought further damage, and barracks were later installed in the château itself. By 1877, the State had sold the estate to a goods merchant who gradually parcelled off the surrounding parkland.

  In 1896, the patron Daniel Iffla, known as Osiris, purchased the château. The park had been reduced to six hectares by that point. Iffla donated the property to the State in 1903. A museum opened in 1905, and the architect Pierre Humbert carried out a full restoration in the early twentieth century. Malmaison is now a Napoleonic musée national, reachable by bus 258 from the RER A Grande Arche station or along Route Nationale 13 from Paris.

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