Vaux-le-Vicomte: Halfway Between the Public and Private Sectors

"Just a tiny earring, and we can save the chapel roof! […] Everyone has their own idea: mine is smoking a quiet cigarette in a backyard two-room flat; yours is to keep the château, even if it means turning it into a hotel." Jean Rochefort's line to Madeleine Renaud in Le Diable par la queue is distinctly sarcastic when it comes to letting strangers into the family château. There was a rather amusing synchronicity between this comic 1969 fresco by French film director Philippe de Broca about the penniless aristocrats who devise tricks to fleece some tourists lost in their ramshackle residence, and the opening to the public, the same year, of the Château de Breteuil at Choisel in the Chevreuse valley. A year previously, Vaux-le-Vicomte had also taken the plunge. "We hadn't seriously thought about opening Vaux to the public," says Patrice de Vogüé, who received the monument as a wedding present in 1967. "But we needed the money. We made the decision in March 1968. But with the petrol shortage and the disruptions caused by the French "May Revolution", our opening couldn't have been more of a failure!" His wife Cristina continues:…