Photo : Laurent Bourcier / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Château de Grignon
In 1582 the diplomat and magistrate Pomponne I de Bellièvre (1529-1607) bought the Grignon estate, in the Yvelines, from the heirs of Diane de Poitiers. It was made a castellany in 1585 and a marquisate in 1651. Pomponne II de Bellièvre, who died in 1657, probably commissioned the present château.
The estate was sold to André III Potier de Novion in 1684, then to the Brassac family, to Pierre-César Auguié in 1796 and to General Bessières. In 1826 Charles X bought the estate, with its buildings, park and land covering nearly 500 hectares, and in 1827 founded the Royal Agronomic Institute there, a school of agricultural techniques. In 1971 it merged with the National Agronomic Institute of Paris, founded in 1848, to form the Institut national agronomique Paris-Grignon.
