Sale of the Century

Half-mediaeval, half-Renaissance, the Château d’Ansouis sits atop one of the most picturesque villages in Provence. Yet, cannon fire and sieges apart, the last year has witnessed the most dramatic events in the castle’s history since the Middle Ages - a very public auction and it being removed from the Sabran-Pontevès family for the first time in almost a thousand years. Jon Bryant investigates….

The château was put up for sale because the four heirs, three brothers and a sister, had not managed to reach an agreement since the death of the late Duchess of Sabran-Pontevès 20 years ago. Following his mother’s wishes, the 50-bedroom pile has since been occupied by the youngest son, Géraud de Sabran-Pontevès, his wife and four sons.

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French inheritance law maintains that property passes equally to all children in the family and also that they individually have the right to force a sale by auction. The elder sister, the Duchess of Orléans, who lives in Paris, claimed her right and the proceeds from the sale of the family’s château (theirs since 1178). The family’s other properties will be split between the four of them - even the family chapel is up for sale.

“I was born here. It is Ansouis I love. I could not care less about money; the château is the culmination of my father’s life’s work and if the place is sold, it will be like selling the hearts of my parents in their tombs,” says Géraud, clearly distressed. “It’s a crime. You cannot sell history!”

Philip Hawkes, a Paris-based agent specialising in château sales, says the public auction is the ‘culmination of the family’s disagreement.’ “No one family member would buy out the others at market value,” so after two decades of quarrels, no-speaks and crumbling sibship, the famous stone lions which guard the château will be protecting a new family.

What made events more dramatic was that even though the family had been relatively discrete in the press (though privately disagreeing furiously), when it came to selling the property, all kinds of names were mentioned as possible buyers including Brad Pitt, who visited the château in the run-up to the auction (he was filming nearby), a Chinese businessman, an English banker, a Marseille doctor, an Arabian Prince, Géraud de Sabran-Pontevès himself and the renowned French couturier Pierre Cardin.

Cardin already owns the château in nearby Lacoste which was once the home of the Marquis de Sade. He has overseen impressive restoration and secured the falling-down walls of the infamous place but he has also upset some of the locals by buying up a considerable amount of property in the rest of the village.

Cardin was always at the front of the list of names and for the locals who did not want their château turned into a hotel, here was man of good taste, hopefully noble intentions and in possession of a vast fortune.

It is generally agreed that if Monsieur Cardin is interested in something then it inevitably ends up in his hands. The lions of Ansouis, however, had other ideas. The auction of the Château d’Ansouis, lot number seven, and with a starting price of €1.14 million, began at 2 pm at the Tribunal de Grande Instance in Paris on October 29^th.

In auctions like this one, potential buyers must engage a lawyer to place a bid for them. You have to agree beforehand with the lawyer what amount you will go up to. The sale was big news and a television crew was outside waiting to film the new owner. The château eventually reached 4.7 million euros but the French system allows a ten-day period after the end of the auction to allow for any further bids. In the days that followed at least one overbid was placed meaning the château auction entered round two and on January 17^th in the same Parisian auction room, the starting price had increased to 5.17 million euros.

Tension in the village rose, particularly for the proprietors of the cafés, restaurants and grocers which had sprung up in the last decade in Ansouis. If the new owners refused to open the château for visitors, why would anyone come to Ansouis? In the auction room, the tension was even higher. Cardin was there, so were a number of French businessmen, a host of cloaked lawyers and some of the Sabran-Pontevès family.

Sales like this always end, romantically and dramatically, not with the clack of the auctioneer’s gavel but with the smoke from an extinguished candle. Three candles are lit, one after the other. When the final one goes out, the sale is over and whoever holds the highest bid at that time takes the spoils. In this case, an 11-bedroomed, cloistered, vaulted and turreted château with an interior surface area of some 1.8 kilometres and commanding view over the stunning backdrop of the Luberon.

Cardin was in a relaxed mood when he went into the auction. His pockets were full but somehow, inexplicably and miraculously for some, he did not manage to acquire the château. There was confusion over how much was being bid. Cardin blamed his lawyer for not bidding when he should have done but the lawyer has remained candidly silent on the matter. Others present claimed Cardin had two lawyers with him and they deliberated too long and suddenly the candle was out.

Bruno Amigues, who managed the sale of the lots on behalf of the Duchess of Orleans, saw it differently. He reckons Cardin never gave his lawyer the maximum bid price that he would have needed to secure the purchase. “It was late in the day, Monsieur Cardin may have been tired,” but for some reason, his lawyer never topped the previous bid. “The lawyer couldn’t bid as he hadn’t received the verbal order to do so,” says Amigues and the château was snatched away from Cardin as the final candle flickered out.

The press photos of him leaving the sale show a man exhausted, frustrated and exasperated. He told the press “What happened in there is a total injustice. I had a much larger sum of money ready than the final bid.”

The château was eventually sold for 5.6 million euros to the Rousset-Rouvière family from Aix-en-Provence.

For some, this sand-coloured ‘pearl of Provence’, was as snip at the price but it’s a brave family to take the château away from its millennium-long owners and the price was bang in the middle of Hawkes’s estimate of three to seven million euros. Most pundits thought it would reach nearer €10 million.

Visible from miles around, the building is an imposing, quite formal structure, set not in a tranquil sea of Provençal vines but as if it has surged up from the village rock itself. All roads lead up to its gates and the new owners will be aware that every journey they make will be watched over by the villagers whose forefathers once fought for the wealthy châtelain living above them.

Inside what was once the Duchess’s room is a candid, sepia photo of the former Duke and Duchess and their four children. They would not have imagined then that fifty years on, it would have come to this. There’s also a photograph of the Queen Elizabeth, the Queen mother, who visited in 1965 and a tiny, two-octave clavichord in the corner of the room.

In the kitchen there’s a small (but unpleasant) contraption for cutting up horse meat and procuring the animal’s blood which is then given, according to the guide, “to people feeling tired or weak.” A collection of 150 copper pots jangle above a gas stove where the Sabran- Pontevès used to prepare their family meals. However, it’s all gone. Géraud said pointedly that if he ever left the château, everything would leave with him. The swords and halberds are now packed away, the armoury walls are bare and the 30 metre escape shaft which used to frighten visitors is now unguarded.

It is perhaps a tragedy for France’s national heritage to split the château from its contents but others would argue the Sabran-Pontevès are as much its contents as the cuirasses, candlesticks and tapestries. Should they have been saved? Would Monsieur Cardin have saved them or did he have other designs?

The removal men did not have to go far. Géraud, who also happens to be the mayor of Ansouis, has moved into a house opposite the château’s front gates. Being the local official, he must live within the commune and the handsome, pale stone house which was formerly occupied by his elder brother Count Jean was re-acquired by the family as one of the properties it had put into the auction. The problem is that the house is so close to the château, it will certainly catch the same blossom from the chestnut trees on the terrace Géraud used to own. He will surely be able to hear the chatter of visitors as they ascend his old steps and smell what the new owners are having for breakfast.

For Hawkes, it’s a sign of the times. “After the Revolution, many noblemen pulled out of politics, retired to their estates and over the generations became poorer and poorer.” Two hundred years later, for many aristocrats in large stately homes, it’s, as the French say, the fin-de-race, the end of the line. “Big houses need money. The sale of historic homes is inevitable if the owners have not married into money or have a lucrative-enough career,” says Hawkes.

Also in the Sabran-Pontevès auction was a deluxe apartment in Paris overlooking the the Hôtel des Invalides (with a walled garden), which sold for 2.9 million euros; two château ruins in Provence, a farmhouse, orchards and vineyards around Ansouis and, Lot 15, the village boules court. Its starting price was a mere 2,500 euros but it ended up going for a respectable €31,000. It is hoped the new owner will continue to lease it to the commune so boules matches can carry-on undisturbed in the Jeu de boules Duc de Sabran at the bottom of the village.

The château was originally built in the tenth century as a fortress and added to in successive generations, ending with the elegant south facade built in the 17-18^th centuries. It had fallen into ruin when the late Duc and Duchesse began major restoration in 1936 and was classified as a national monument in 1948.

The new owners, who are set to move in before the summer, have said they will, of course, open the château to visitors but with no sword collections or family portraits to view, they will have to develop another kind of spectacle. They will first have to get the stone lions on their side and that may not be so easy, the Sabran-Pontevès family motto is Noli irritare Leonem - Don’t provoke the lion.

Comments

[Evelyn]

I just finished reading a book by Yvone Lenard, "The Magic of Provence." Although she does not specifically name Ansouris, I believe this is the village she writes about. She became friends with the Duchess and her family and spent many evenings in this Chateau. Definitely worth reading if you are intrigued by the "Sale of the Century."

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