The House That Grief Built

The Guise Salon in the Château de Chantilly, outside Paris, where the Duke and Duchess of Aumale had private apartments. The rooms reopened in February after a two-year restoration project. Credit: Sophie Lloyd
The Guise Salon in the Château de Chantilly, outside Paris, where the Duke and Duchess of Aumale had private apartments. The rooms reopened in February after a two-year restoration project. Credit: Sophie Lloyd
TT

The House That Grief Built

The Guise Salon in the Château de Chantilly, outside Paris, where the Duke and Duchess of Aumale had private apartments. The rooms reopened in February after a two-year restoration project. Credit: Sophie Lloyd
The Guise Salon in the Château de Chantilly, outside Paris, where the Duke and Duchess of Aumale had private apartments. The rooms reopened in February after a two-year restoration project. Credit: Sophie Lloyd

When visiting the newly restored private apartments of the Duke of Aumale at the Château de Chantilly outside Paris, you could easily think you were seeing the interiors of an 18th-century French castle. The rooms are sumptuous, with purple damask-covered walls, marquetry-inlaid furniture, parquet de Versailles floors and exquisitely carved boiseries, or wooden panels, depicting musical instruments and garden implements.

It all seems very grand, though these rooms were actually redone in the 19th century, but the décor is linked to utter tragedy.

In 1830, the Duke of Aumale, one of the eight children of the king, Louis Philippe d’Orléans, inherited the estate at 8, after its rightful heir was shot by a firing squad on Napoleon’s orders. The young duke attended school in Paris and chose a career in the army. He distinguished himself in military campaigns in Algeria.

In 1844, he married his cousin Marie-Caroline, the daughter of the Prince of Salerno and a grandniece of Marie Antoinette, and hired the fashionable society decorator and court painter Eugène Lami to design the interiors of the old private apartments in a ground-floor wing of the castle.

Then came the revolution of 1848. The monarchy fell, forcing the duke and his family into exile in England (with their furniture, fortunately). Chantilly was sold.

The duke could not return to France for more than 20 years, until the fall of the Second Empire in 1870, when Napoleon III was overthrown. In the meantime, the duke’s wife and older son had died in England. He returned to France only to witness his younger son die from an illness.

The duke regained ownership of Chantilly. In his grief, he re-created the old private rooms with their original contents, precisely as Lami had decorated them in the 1840s.

“These private apartments became his ‘cemetery,’ as he called them,” said Mathieu Deldicque, curator of the Condé Museum at Chantilly. “Furniture was placed precisely where it had been earlier.”

Eventually, the duke bequeathed the chateau to the Institute of France, so the décor and collections would be protected and open to the public. After his death in 1897, the private rooms were closed and remained closed until the 1990s.

Now, Mr. Deldicque has overseen the full, detailed restoration of the suite of rooms, a two-year project costing 2.5 million euros, about $2.8 million. The restoration included meticulously removing centuries of overpainting on the 18th-century boiseries, fixing the gold-inflected plaster cove ceilings, reinstalling elaborate curtains and swags, and reupholstering the furniture with elaborate trim. The rooms opened in February.

The New York Times



China Travel Peaks as Millions Head Home for Lunar New Year

 A woman directs passengers at the departure hall at the Beijing West Railway Station ahead of the Lunar New Year in Beijing on Friday, Jan. 24, 2025. (AP)
A woman directs passengers at the departure hall at the Beijing West Railway Station ahead of the Lunar New Year in Beijing on Friday, Jan. 24, 2025. (AP)
TT

China Travel Peaks as Millions Head Home for Lunar New Year

 A woman directs passengers at the departure hall at the Beijing West Railway Station ahead of the Lunar New Year in Beijing on Friday, Jan. 24, 2025. (AP)
A woman directs passengers at the departure hall at the Beijing West Railway Station ahead of the Lunar New Year in Beijing on Friday, Jan. 24, 2025. (AP)

Train stations and airports across China saw the biggest peak in travelers on Saturday ahead of the Lunar New Year, as millions of people returned home to spend the holidays with their families in an annual migration that is expected to be a record.

The Chinese New Year, the Year of the Snake, begins Wednesday.

The Chinese enjoy eight consecutive public holidays, an opportunity to share festive meals with family, attend traditional performances or set off firecrackers and fireworks.

At Beijing West Station, an AFP journalist saw thousands of travelers Saturday wrapped up in parkas, many wearing face masks to avoid catching anything on packed trains, dragging their suitcases through the hallways before boarding the carriages.

During the traditional 40-day period that runs before, during and after the holidays, some nine billion interprovincial passenger trips, on all forms of transport combined, are expected to be made, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

Train and air travel are expected to "hit record highs" during this year's migration, Xinhua said.

The transport ministry said it expects 510 million train trips and 90 million air trips during the period.

According to the national railway company, which has added thousands of trains to meet demand, Saturday is "the main peak" at stations before the holidays.

It said it used data from ticket sales and waiting lists to predict and regulate supply.

With many people working and studying in provinces other than their own because of better opportunities, there is a large population migration around the New Year holiday.

Many factories have already closed for the holiday, with such workers traditionally returning home earlier than the rest of the population.

While train travel was still an epic journey even 10 years ago, sometimes lasting several days, the rapid development of an efficient and comfortable high-speed network has made travel much simpler.