Villa Viardot

This property, one of the oldest in Bougival, dates back to 1830. The property of Les Fresnes was part of the La Jonchère estate at the beginning of the 19th century when Eugène de Beauharnais lived there. It was then that this house must have been built in the neo-classical taste of the period, reminiscent of the Palladian style, with two reception rooms decorated inside with Pompeian style paintings and plasterwork inspired by Antiquity. In the large reception room, the areas above the doors compose a cycle representing the four seasons.

It was bought in 1874 by the Russian writer Ivan Turgenev who owned the usufruct of it while he gave ownership of the estate without usufruct to Pauline Viardot, the famous opera singer and sister of Maria Malibran, who lived there with her family. In this estate, she used to receive the writers and great composers of the time who entertained in this house and in the “salons” which were very fashionable at the end of the 19th century and which made Les Frênes famous. During the 1950s, the cinema actress Gaby Morlay (1893-1964) lived there.