Delightful visual and olfactory pleasures await a visitor at the Château of Chamerolles, an early 16th c fairy-tale castle with an elegant red and black brick facade, built in a lozenge pattern, complete with turrets, cannon holes and even a double drawbridge across the moat. Chamerolles was built by Louis XII’s Chamberlain, Lancelot I du Lac (not to be confused with Lancelot of King Arthur’s Round Table), who chose the architecture of a traditional medieval fortress rather than the then new, early Renaissance style.

During the religious wars, his grandfather, Lancelot II, who had converted to Protestantism, invited co-religionists in the region to seek refuge in his castle. A major restoration project of the buildings in 1988 unveiled perfectly preserved Protestant inscriptions in the Chapel that had been covered up since1655.

Because of the high concentration of perfume, cosmetic and hygiene industries implanted in the area today, it is jokingly referred to as «Cosmetic Valley ». Hence, when massive restoration of Chamerolles was completed and regional authorities (to whom the castle now belongs) were looking for a theme to attract visitors, they decided to open a perfume museum in one of the Château wings.

The surrounding gardens were restored according to the original layout, including sumptuous, purely decorative flower beds, a space for rare and exotic plants, a maze, and a garden with vegetables, aromatic herbs, healing plants, etc.
In the North and West Wings of the Château, several large rooms were redecorated and furnished, each one illustrating a specific historical period of importance in Chamerolles’ history.

The two-floor South Wing houses the «Perfume Walk» proper. Visitors learn that though perfume making was an ancient art, it knew an unprecedented upswing in the 16th century. The art of distillation was improved and recently invented printing presses rapidly spread formulas and techniques. The Renaissance was a time of quest for knowledge, beauty and sophistication and sweet scents became an important part of a refined life-style.
On the other hand, paradoxically, it was also the period when doctors prescribed the «dry toilette» and prescribed the medieval bath tub which still was used – at least by the prosperous classes – in the early 1500s. According to the medical profession, water made the skin more prone to catch disease. And Christian clerics considered taking a bath to be an immoral pleasure.

Hence people and habitations didn’t exactly smell of roses – unless roses were transformed into fragrances or spread out fresh in living quarters. Scented plants were hanging from ceilings to mask foul air, and men and women alike hid tiny perfumed sachets inside their clothes. The «dry toilette» consisted of rubbing parts of the body with scented linen wash cloths («toilettes»). Hair was treated with fragrant powders (apparently also good for keeping parasites at bay) and all kinds of aromatic oils and pastes were used to cover up body odors.

The colorful and sweet-smelling «Perfume Walk» takes visitors through a 16th c perfume laboratory, complete with raw materials and accessories, including an old still. As scent-makers were afraid of being mistaken for witches, they would hang a cross in their work place.

A 16th c bedroom illustrates the contemporary preoccupation with beauty and sweet smells, showing various kinds of makeup, ointments and perfumes under a ceiling decorated with bouquets of dried aromatic plants. Further along the Walk, we see braziers where rosemary or juniper berries were burnt to purify the fetid air.

In the 18th c, the bath returned to fashion and heavy perfumes made way for more discreet «eaux précieuses», like the famous Eau de Cologne (or « water from Cologne») which today is a generic name for lightly scented «waters». Together with the restored honor of the bathtub, a new hygienic accessory appeared, the bidet.

A private, so-called «cave à perfums» was a mandatory possession of any elegant citizen in the 18th c. The case contained various fragrance bases and tools for making personalized scent mixtures to match the owner’s moods and attires and adapt to different social occasions. It was also the century when many new and exotic plants, like vanilla, bergamot, patchouli and various spices entered European perfume laboratories.

Industrialization and a newly enriched bourgoisie in the 19th c invigorated the demand for cosmetics and perfume. «Scent factories» appeared, the first of them in Grasse which is still an important perfume center. 18th c brands, such as «Roger et Gallet», were soon to be followed by other, today still famous, labels like «Guerlain». The vaporizer was invented in 1859 and quickly put to use by the fragrance industry.

As the Walk continues into the 20th c, visitors learn that Monsieur Coty was the first to combine natural and synthetic essence, thereby breaking ground for modern perfume-making. Coty also modernized the containers, asking glass artist Lalique to design extravagant bottles.

Towards the end of the display, the museum shows a so-called «perfume organ», a horseshoe-formed piece of furniture with 270 bottles of different fragrances, natural as well as synthetic, lined up on its shelves. Until the 1920s, this «organ» was used by «les Nez» (or the «Noses »), i.e. those great artists who will put several years of research into creating one new fragrance that will make someone feel very special.

 

For further info please contact:
Château de Chamerolles
45170 Chilleurs-aux-Bois
Ph. 33-(0)2 38 39 84 66
chateau.chamerolles@cg45.fr

http://www.orleanscity.com/tourisme/chamerolle.htm

Le château de Chamerolles : visite parfumée

Bâti à l’aube de la Renaissance par Lancelot 1er du Lac, selons les plans d’une forteresse médiévale, Chamerolles dresse ses tours au coeur d’un pays d’étangs, au coeur de la Beauce et au coeur de la Gâtine. Il fut au XVIIe siècle un haut lieu du protestantisme avant d’être rendu à une vocation plus résidentielle. Propriété du Conseil Général du Loiret depuis 1987, Chamerolles et son jardin Renaissance, qui avaient sombré dans un lent abandon ont été entièrement restaurés.

Avec la promenade des parfums le château est aujourd’hui voué à l’histoire des senteurs et à l’art du parfum. Il offre un véritable parcours initiatique au fil de l’histoire des parfums et de l’hygiène depuis le XVIe siècle jusqu’à nos jours au travers d’un ensemble de salles reconstituées dans le goût de chaque époque.

Du jardin Renaissance créé à la fin du XVIe siècle par Lancelot II du Lac (petit fils de Lancelot 1er, bâtisseur du château) de retour d’Italie, ne subsistaient en 1987 que friches et fossés … Il a aujourd’hui retrouvé tout son charme d’autrefois.

Tout à la fois jardin d’utilité, d’agrément et d’apparat, il se compose de six parterres. On y goûte le charme du “Préau”, ses bancs de briques et son mobilier disposés au cÅ“ur d’espaces gazonnés; le “Carré de broderies” composé de buis taillés et de thym entourant un obélisque de pierre; le “carré des plantes rares” où oeillets, absinthe et acanthe côtoient, autour d’un puits, de nombreuses plantes odoriférantes.