Domaine départemental de la Vallée-aux-Loups: Chateaubriand's home

A magical place, the park is an invitation to romance. Chateaubriand himself planted a large collection of trees, chosen in memory of the countries he visited. It's also a literary work: the writer regarded his trees as his children, tending them with his own hands, writing odes to them, associating them with memories and the female characters in his novels. Very attached to his estate, he wrote in his Mémoires d'outre-tombe : " La Vallée-aux-Loups, of all the things that have escaped me, is the only one I regret ".

From 1807 to 1817, Chateaubriand enjoyed a rich period of literary creation here, during which he began writing his masterpiece, Mémoires d'outre-tombe. At the beginning of the ^20th century, Doctor Henry Le Savoureux turned the house into a place of remembrance dedicated to Chateaubriand, while welcoming numerous artists and writers with his wife Lydie Plekhanov.

The house's collections include works of art relating to Chateaubriand, his family and friends, and the characters in his novels. Numerous books - both first editions and illustrated editions - as well as manuscripts and autographs by Chateaubriand are also kept here. The sheer number and value of these documents in the author's own hand make the Maison de Chateaubriand one of the three most important international institutions housing the writer's writings and autographs, alongside the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Fondation Martin Bodmer.

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Come and discover the Maison de Chateaubriand exhibition, running until September 28, 2025, based on René-François de Chateaubriand's famous novel, published in 1801: "Atala,1801. An illustrated journey to the heart of a novel".

The Maison de Chateaubriand invites you to discover one of the first novels of Romantic literature, based on the impossible love story of Chactas and Atala, two Indians living on the banks of the Mississippi in the lush forests of Florida.

The publication of Atala, the famous writer's first novel, launched Chateaubriand's literary career. Published in 1801, the work immediately spread beyond France's borders, and was reprinted many times, illustrated by famous illustrators such as Gustave Doré.

You'll be able to discover some one hundred works of great diversity, created in the 19th and 20th centuries: paintings, engravings, drawings, sculptures, objets d'art, decorative objects, derivative products, editions (original, parodic, illustrated, translations). 90% of the works come from the Maison de Chateaubriand collections, and are complemented by a dozen loans from various museums, including the Louvre, the Musée National Jean-Jacques Henner, the Musée Carnavalet - Histoire de Paris and the Musée de la Toile de Jouy in Jouy-en-Josas.