The Château de Bouges is a manor was built in 1765, probably by Ange-Jacques Gabriel. It was built on lands acquired by Charles-François Leblanc de Manarval, the master of the royal forges and the director of the royal manufacturer of cloth in Châteauroux.
The château was modeled after the Petit Trianon at the Palace of Versailles. In 1818, the château became the property of Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, the former foreign minister of Napoleon Bonaparte. Talleyrand put it at the disposition of his niece and, according to rumors, his one-time mistress,Dorothée de Courlande (1793-1862). She was also owner from 1828 à 1847 of the Château de Rochecotte at Saint-Patrice.Then chateau was purchased by Tunisian general Mahmoud Benaiad.
In 1917, the château was purchased by Henry Viguier and his wife, Renée Normant, who restored it, decorated and refurbished it. Viguier was the président-directeur-général of the Paris department store Bazar de l'Hôtel de Ville. In addition to the château, he owned a Paris town house on the avenue Foch, a manor house in Houlgate and a villa in Grasse. The Viguiers, who had no children, left the house and its furniture to the French state in 1968.
The château has a park of eighty hectares, which include a landscape garden, an arboretum, a floral garden created in 1920, large greenhouses, and a formal French garden. It also includes large stables which were later used as garages by the last owners. The manor is classified as a monument historique and the gardens are listed by the Ministry of Culture as among the Notable Gardens of France. The château and gardens are open to the public.
References:Saint-Georges de Boscherville Abbey is a former Benedictine abbey. It was founded in about 1113 by Guillaume de Tancarville on the site of an earlier establishment of secular canons and settled by monks from the Abbey of Saint-Evroul. The abbey church made of Caumont stone was erected from 1113 to 1140. The Norman builders aimed to have very well-lit naves and they did this by means of tall, large windows, initially made possible by a wooden ceiling, which prevented uplift, although this was replaced by a Gothic vault in the 13th century. The chapter room was built after the abbey church and dates from the last quarter of the 12th century.
The arrival of the Maurist monks in 1659, after the disasters of the Wars of Religion, helped to get the abbey back on a firmer spiritual, architectural and economic footing. They erected a large monastic building one wing of which fitted tightly around the chapter house (which was otherwise left as it was).