The Château de Monte-Cristo and the Panthéon, Paris
Alexandre Dumas, père, had the Château de Monte-Cristo and the Château d’If – this his writing studio – built in 1846, in the midst of vast grounds with grottos, rockeries, and waterfalls which were once full of monkeys and parrots and even a vulture called Jugurtha! When the architect Hippolyte Durand pointed out that what Dumas hand in mind would be extremely expensive, Dumas coolly relied, “I certainly hope so!” Balzac described it as “one of the most delicious follies ever created!. However, only two years later, the extravagant spendthrift had run short of money and was forced to sell it, and over the ensuing years it fell into a state of disrepair. It was until over a century later, threatened with demolition, that the three local communes and La Société des amis d’Alexandre Dumas came to its rescue and restored it, the Moorish room with the support of King Hassan II of Morocco, and then turned it into a museum.
Dumas died on 5 December 1870 at the age of 68 in Puys and was laid to rest in Villers-Cotterêts, but in 2002 his body was moved to the Pantheon in Paris, the resting place of the likes of Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Victor Hugo, and Emile Zola, with the then president Jacques Chirac saying that an injustice was being corrected with the proper honouring of one of France’s greatest authors.
