Château de Thoiry

The Château de Thoiry is a Renaissance castle in the Yvelines, about fifty kilometres west of Paris. It was built between 1562 and 1564 by the architect Olivier Ymbert for Raoul Moreau. In 1612, Guillaume Marescot acquired it, and the estate then stayed for about four centuries in the same family, most often through heiresses, up to Count Paul de La Panouse. Only a few ground-floor rooms can be visited; you can see tapestries, period furniture and a harpsichord by François-Étienne Blanchet.

The estate covers about 380 hectares. It includes a French-style garden designed in 1715 by Claude Desgot and an English-style garden created between 1827 and 1850, labelled "jardin remarquable". The castle opened to the public in 1965 with the creation of a zoological park by Antoine de La Panouse, which occupies about 130 hectares. It served as a filming location for the film "Is Paris Burning?" in 1966.

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