Description

Open from 9:30 am to 6:00 pm from May 2nd to September 4th and from 10:00 am to 5:30 pm from September 5th to April 30th. Closed: January 1st, May 1st, December 25th. Free for EU citizens under 26 and for everyone on the first Sunday of the month from November to March. Ticket valid for one year from the date of issue. Please note: if you choose the "store pickup" option, the ticket must be collected from one of our designated pickup points and not at the monument itself. Built in the 15th century by Louis d'Orléans, a younger son of the Valois royal family, the Château de Pierrefonds was dismantled on the orders of Louis XIII in 1617. While the enchanting ruins, acquired by Napoleon I, saved it from oblivion, it was Emperor Napoleon III who ensured its rescue by entrusting its reconstruction to the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. The project, carried out in successive stages from 1857, gradually evolved: from the originally planned occasional imperial residence, it slowly transformed into a museum-like interpretation, until its opening to the public in 1867. Combining archaeological restoration and pure creation, Viollet-le-Duc produced his most masterful work at Pierrefonds: the complete defensive system of a fortified castle was combined with a lordly residence housing the imperial apartments, its decor imbued with the chivalric imagination. The park, designed by Viollet-le-Duc as an open-air museum of fortification, is fully accessible to the public. Also to be discovered on the castle tour is the "Bal des Gisants" (Dance of the Recumbent Figures), a permanent scenography of the gallery of recumbent figures, a true little-known treasure of French heritage, and a permanent exhibition on the artistic plumbing of the Monduit workshops, which participated in most of the major restoration projects in historical monuments in the 19th and 20th centuries.