The story of this place
Nicolas Fouquet, the fabulously wealthy finance minister of young Louis XIV, assembled a dream team—architect Le Vau, painter Le Brun and gardener Le Nôtre—to build Vaux-le-Vicomte, the most perfect château of its age. On 17 August 1661 he threw a housewarming party of such extravagance, complete with a Molière play and fireworks, that the 23-year-old king was consumed with envy and suspicion of how a minister could afford it. Three weeks later Fouquet was arrested by d'Artagnan of the Musketeers, tried for embezzlement and imprisoned for life. Louis then poached Fouquet's three geniuses to create Versailles on a colossal scale. Vaux survives as the flawless prototype it was.