12th–13th centuries The first
castle, named the
Grand Châtelet, was built on the site by
Louis VI in 1124. The castle was expanded by
Louis IX in the 1230s. The Saint Louis chapel at the castle belongs to the
Rayonnant phase of
French Gothic architecture. A 1238 charter of Louis IX instituting a regular religious service at the chapel is the first mention of a chapel having been built at the royal castle. This was a
Sainte Chapelle, to house a relic of the
Crown of Thorns or the
True Cross. Its plan and architecture prefigure the major
Sainte-Chapelle which Louis built within the
Palais de la Cité at
Paris between 1240 and 1248. Both buildings were built by Louis's favourite architect
Pierre de Montreuil, who adapted the architectural formulae invented at Saint Germain for use in Paris. A single nave ends in a
chevet, with almost all the wall areas filled by tall narrow glass windows, between which are large exterior
buttresses. The
ogives of the vault rest on columns between the bays and the column bases are placed behind a low isolated arcade. The building can thus be open and empty of all internal supports. This large number of windows is also enabled by the
pierre armée technique, with metal elements built into the structure of the walls to ensure the stones' stability. The west wall is adorned by a large Gothic
rose window in the
Rayonnant Gothic style. It was in this chapel in 1238 that
Baldwin II of Constantinople presented Louis with the
relic of the crown of thorns and, though they were intended for the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, they were housed here until the Paris chapel was consecrated in April 1248. The castle was burned by
Edward the Black Prince in 1346; of it, only the
Gothic chapel remains from the site's medieval phase. This
Château Vieux was rebuilt by
Charles V in the 1360s on the old foundations.
16th–18th centuries , a new addition to the palace that was later demolished The oldest parts of the current château were reconstructed by
Francis I in 1539, and have subsequently been expanded several times. On 10 July 1547 a political rivalry came to a head in a legal
duel here. Against the odds,
Guy I de Chabot, 7th baron de
Jarnac triumphed over
François de Vivonne, seigneur de la Chasteigneraie, who died the next day after what was called "coup de Jarnac". In September 1548, rooms above the royal suite were refurbished for
Mary, Queen of Scots and the children of
Henry II of France. Henry II built a separate
new château nearby, to designs by
Philibert de l'Orme. It stood at the crest of a slope, which was shaped, under the direction of
Étienne du Pérac into three massive descending terraces and narrower subsidiary mediating terraces, which were linked by divided symmetrical stairs and ramps and extended a single axis that finished at the edge of the
Seine; the design took many cues from the
Villa Lante at
Bagnaia. "Étienne du Pérac had spent a long time in Italy, and one manifestation of his interest in gardens of this type is his well-known view of the
Villa d'Este, engraved in 1573." The gardens laid out at Saint-Germain-en-Laye were among a half-dozen gardens introducing the
Italian garden style to France that laid the groundwork for the
French formal garden. Unlike the
parterres that were laid out in casual relation to existing châteaux, often on difficult sites originally selected for defensive reasons, these new gardens extended the central axis of a symmetrical building façade in rigorously symmetrical axial designs of patterned parterres, gravel walks, fountains and basins, and formally planted
bosquets; they began the tradition that reached its apex after 1650 in the gardens of
André Le Nôtre. According to
Claude Mollet's
Théâtre des plans et jardinage the parterres were laid out in 1595 for
Henry IV by
Claude Mollet, trained at Anet and the progenitor of a dynasty of royal gardeners. One of the parterre designs by Mollet at Saint-Germain-en-Laye was illustrated in
Olivier de Serres' (1600), but the
Château Neuf and the whole of its spectacular series of terraces can be fully seen in an engraving after
Alexandre Francini, 1614.
Louis XIV was born at the Château Neuf in 1638. One of du Pérac's retaining walls collapsed in 1660, and Louis undertook a renovation of the gardens in 1662. At his majority he established his court here in 1666, but he preferred the
Château Vieux: the
Château Neuf was abandoned in the 1660s and demolished. From 1663 until 1682, when the King removed definitively to
Versailles, the team that he inherited from the unfortunate
Nicolas Fouquet—
Louis Le Vau,
Jules Hardouin-Mansart and
André Le Nôtre laboured to give the ancient pile a more suitable aspect. The gardens were remade by André Le Nôtre from 1669 to 1673, and include a 2.4 kilometre long stone terrace which provides a view over the valley of the
Seine and, in the distance, Paris. , close by its
RER A railway station. Louis XIV turned the château over to King
James II of England after his exile from Britain in the
Glorious Revolution of 1688. King James lived in the château for thirteen years, and his daughter
Louise-Marie Stuart was born in exile here in 1692. King James lies buried in the nearby Church of
Saint-Germain; his wife
Mary of Modena remained at the château until her death in 1718. Their son
James left the château in 1716, ultimately settling in Rome. Many
Jacobites—supporters of the exiled Stuarts—remained at the château until the
French Revolution, leaving in 1793. The Jacobites often consisted of former members of the Jacobite court, and the apartments left empty in the château by the Jacobite court pensioners upon their death, were often passed down to their widows and children by the caretaker of the château,
Adrien Maurice de Noailles, 3rd Duke of Noailles. The Jacobite colony at Saint-Germain was still dominant in the 1750s, when they were however treated with increasing hostility. After the death of the Duke of Noailles in 1766, who had been responsible for the continuing Jacobite dominance because of his preference to give rooms to Jacobites, the British dominance quickly decreased and more French inhabitants were given lodgings in the château: the last member of the Stuart court was Theresa O'Connel, who died in 1778. On September 10, 1919 the
Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, ending hostilities between the
Allies of World War I and
Austria, was signed at the château. During the
German occupation (1940–44), the château served as the headquarters of the German Army in France. The museum was renamed the ''
Musée d'Archéologie Nationale'' in 2005. Its collections include finds from
Paleolithic to
Merovingian times. == Gallery ==