Château de la Muette

The Château de la Muette (French Château de la Muette ) was a castle, which served for nearly two centuries as the residence of the French royal house. It was until the 1850s, surrounded by extensive parkland, which lay between the original Parisian suburb of Passy (in the east ) and the Bois de Boulogne ( in the west). After the 1860 annexation made ​​from Passy to Paris an entire neighborhood was named Muette. The castle was demolished in 1920 and rebuilt in 1921/22, elsewhere in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. The new building houses since 1949 the headquarters of the OECD or of its predecessor OEEC.

History

The Knight King Francis I. had built in the 1540s on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne, a hunting lodge, which received the name La pack. This was in 1572 on the orders of Charles IX. converted to a small castle. This he bequeathed to his sister Margaret of Valois, which was accomplished in the same year her marriage to Henry IV Queen of France.

Due to the increasing need of restructuring state, the castle was no longer inhabited by the royal family since 1787. Trying to sell it to a private investor, failed due to the obviously overestimated the purchase price. Thus, the property remained until the expropriation in 1792 during the French Revolution in the possession of the royal family.

The construction of the railway line Passy- Auteuil in 1854, the spacious park was dismembered and the land divided into small plots on which a new residential area was built.

By 1920, the remaining estate of Henri de Rothschild was acquired, which was built 1921/22, a new building, which also bears the name " Castle La Muette ". 1949, the property was sold to the OECD predecessor OEEC (Organisation for European Economic Cooperation ), which has since had its headquarters there.