The château's history
In 1686, a man named Jean-Baptiste Jodelet, lord of Vaucouleurs and an intendant under Louis XIV, took possession of fifty hectares of land along the river Canavère, at Puget-sur-Argens. In that fertile ground he planted vines and built a sturdy wine farm, known today as the château's “cave”.
It was his son, young Honoré, born in Fréjus in 1687, who inherited the estate when his father died in 1697.
During the eighteenth century the property changed hands, passing first to Joseph Brun, a man from the Fréjus area, around 1730, and then to his son Jean Brun through a marriage in 1755.
In 1772 a local dignitary named Sieur Nicolas Rey, mayor of the town, an influential figure in Puget and the owner of the neighbouring land, decided to buy the estate and build a stately bastide on it, perched on a rocky plateau at the highest point of the plot. The bastide took three years to build and was finished in 1775.
In the Rey family's day, elegant evenings were often held here in illustrious company, and the estate's reputation spread across the Var. The story goes that Napoleon Bonaparte, returning from Egypt in October 1799, made this his first stop on French soil before heading north to Paris.
After the Rey family's heyday, the estate passed to the Court family, following the marriage of Joseph Court to Magdeleine-Sophie Rey, Nicolas Rey's granddaughter. The bastide took the name “Villa Sophie”, an inscription that still stands above the arch of the château's main door.
It was in the middle of the nineteenth century, in a more extravagant age, that the bastide acquired its medieval air with the addition of two crenellated towers.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, phylloxera swept through France. The insect, originally from the United States, infested and killed off the French vineyards within a few decades. Vaucouleurs was not spared, and Joseph Court had to find a way to replace the vines he had lost. His idea was to build a racecourse, creating a new source of income and offering the region a welcome distraction.
On 3 June 1883 the Vaucouleurs racecourse was inaugurated, becoming one of the largest and most lavish in the south of France. “That day more than five thousand visitors poured into Puget”, as the newspaper Le Var reported on 7 June 1883.
Fashionable Paris, wintering on the Riviera, came to bet on the races and celebrate at the estate, which for such company needed a grander name than “Villa Sophie”. And so it became the “Château de Vaucouleurs”.
A few years later the country overcame the phylloxera crisis by grafting onto American rootstock, which was naturally resistant to the pest. The racecourse, difficult to run, soon fell into decline and the new Franco-American vines reclaimed the land, but the name “Château de Vaucouleurs” remained on the labels of the wine.
The château changed hands again in 1892, when Monsieur Robillis bought it and improved its surroundings with a terrace and a formal French garden. In 1928 Monsieur Zaag took it over, followed by Monsieur Sénéchal in 1933.
It was not until 1943 that the estate came into the Le Bigot family. Guillaume Le Bigot, a senior civil servant and future comptroller general of the French Navy, living between Paris and Toulon, bought it as a wedding present for his wife.
They had barely settled in when the château was requisitioned, first by Italian troops and then by the Germans. The latter took over the ground and first floors, leaving the owner and her children with a single bedroom and a small kitchen.
Field Marshal Rommel himself came to Vaucouleurs. His visit was a strategic one: the plan was to mount guns on the château's towers. Fortunately this proved impossible, since they could only be reached through a glass roof and a staircase, and the towers themselves were sloping. The guns were therefore placed at the highest point of the estate, trained on the sea to repel any Allied landing.
By then the Germans were anxious about their future, and even asked Madame Le Bigot to follow the news on the radio so that she could keep them informed.
Shortly before the landings they withdrew into the woods, fearing reprisals from the Americans, who had been described to them as savages who tortured prisoners before executing them.
At the end of the war the liberating American troops were warmly welcomed and pitched a camp of tents across the whole estate. It must be said that they were rather less discreet than the previous occupants, being noisy and fond of a drink. But what they had been through spoke in their favour, and allowances were made.
Long after the war had ended, former German and Italian soldiers came back to the château, some of them with their children.
Monsieur Le Bigot, mayor of Puget-sur-Argens from 1959 to 1977, was deeply involved in local and national politics and left his mark on the region.
From the day it was built to the present, the Château de Vaucouleurs has drawn a remarkable succession of guests: Napoleon Bonaparte, Field Marshal Rommel, General Eisenhower, the future President of the United States, Commander Cousteau, and General Charles de Gaulle, who stayed here on several occasions.
Over the past eight decades the estate has become a true family château, welcoming the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Monsieur and Madame Le Bigot every summer, for stays of varying length.
Since the mid-2010s, wanting to keep this inheritance alive, they have opened the place up for exclusive hire, for stays and for weddings, which now each in their own way set the rhythm of the château's life through spring, summer and autumn.
