Park and gardens of the Domaine Royal de Randan

THE CASTLE GROUNDS

They are characterized by regular spaces. The main courtyard is bounded by the château, the dry moat and an imposing gate set in pedestals topped with cast-iron animal sculptures.
To the south, three levels rise up to the foot of the château :
– the reserved garden :(…)

THE CASTLE GROUNDS

They are characterized by regular spaces. The main courtyard is bounded by the château, the dry moat and an imposing gate set in pedestals topped with cast-iron animal sculptures.
To the south, three levels rise up to the foot of the château :
– the reserved garden : a gated terrace once reserved for the royal family, unlike the park, which was open to the public.
– the Italian garden : sloping and terraced, originally planted with hundreds of rosebushes, with an avenue of lime trees and a pergola, and enlivened by two ponds with fountains.
– the florist’s garden : a regular garden laid out around a pond with a fountain.
These gardens will be restored in 2025-2027.

All these terraces offer panoramic views over part of the Auvergne mountains.

THE LANDSCAPED PARK

This is characterized by alternating wooded areas and meadows criss-crossed by a dense network of bridle paths and footpaths. Viewpoints offer vistas of the park and surrounding landscape. In the past, numerous fabriques (aediculae or small buildings adorning a garden) punctuated the promenades : obelisk, ice houses, thatched cottages, apiary, Maison Saint-Julien…

An extensive underground and overhead water system provided gravity-fed water to four ponds and several basins.

UTILITY GARDENS AND GREENHOUSES

Two watering basins and the recently restored grain store are the remains of the vast vegetable garden that was established not far from the kitchens.

Close to the kitchen garden stands the huge orangery, designed to house the numerous orange trees in crates, the main ornamental feature of the château’s surroundings and once the pride of Randan’s parkland. At the front of the orangery, the two semi-buried greenhouses are copies of those in the Versailles kitchen garden, which have now disappeared.

Numerous orchards and a nursery completed the commercial gardens. Today, a conservatory orchard, with open-air and espaliered trees, is gradually being recreated.

PHOTOGRAPHIC EXHIBITION in the park :
MEMORIES OF A WAR HOSPITAL, 1914-1918

During the First World War, on the initiative of Isabelle d’Orléans (1848-1919), Countess of Paris and owner of the Domaine de Randan, a 24-bed military hospital was set up in the château’s outbuildings. Placed under the aegis of the Red Cross, this establishment welcomed hundreds of wounded soldiers from September 1914 to February 1919.
Throughout the war, the hospital’s young doctor, Paul Fayolle, took photographs of soldiers convalescing at Randan. Some of these never-before-seen images have been found and are presented on the very site where the hospital was established.
The whole point of the exhibition is to bring visitors face-to-face with the wounded and the volunteers who ran the hospital. To make this face-to-face encounter even more disturbing, some of the images have been enlarged to human scale.
Among the photos on display are a rare shot of the Countess of Paris, dressed as a nurse, at a patient’s bedside, and one of Queen Amélie of Portugal attending the soldiers’ Christmas tree party on December 25, 1914.