a child. Cardinal Charles de Bourbon rebuilt the castle in Renaissance style in the 16th century. The two gatehouses are the testimony of this time. The gatehouse on the right was inhabited by the Captain of the Castle; it still contains an underground jail with an exceptional locking system. The one on the left (now a barn) was the house-keeper's lodge. The castle was one of the strongholds of the Prince of Condé, who was chief of the Protestant party during the French Wars of Religion. His wife, Eleonore de Roye, and her children often came here to get away from the troubles. Up to 1624, the date of the marriage of Marie de Bourbon, Countess of Soissons to Thomas, Prince of Carignan (the present Italian royal family), the castle belonged to the House of Condé. Unfortunately, it was badly damaged, from 1711 to 1719, by troops that were sent by King Louis XIV of France, who had it confiscated during the Franco-Austrian War (the owner of the time being a cousin of an Austrian general). It was stayed in by the famous Jeanne Baptiste d'Albert, comtesse de Verrue. The confiscated castle was bought in 1719 by a private secretary of King Louis XIV, whose name was Jean-François Leriget, Marquis de la Faye. He was councillor to the King and a diplomat. It was he who was in charge of finding a wife to the young King Louis XV of France. The Marquis was a member of the French Academy, a director of the French India Company, and accordingly, was a very rich man. In his mansion in Paris, he often received such famous people as Voltaire and Crébillon. Much of the castle's final appearance is due to the Marquis' tastes. He brought to Condé, the talents of the Italian architect Servandoni, a master of the "deception" style, and one of the architects of the Palazzo Farnese in Rome. He shut down the southern aisle, to allow the sun to penetrate into the rooms, and gave a symmetrical appearance to the other aisle. To achieve this, he was obliged to paint false windows in the medieval part of the Castle, the walls being 2 meters thick. For the interior decoration, he invited fashionable painters of the time - Lemoyne, his disciple Boucher, Watteau and his disciple Lancret, and last but not least, Jean-Baptiste Oudry. At a later date, the castle