Château de Balleroy

Château de Balleroy, in Balleroy-sur-Drôme, France, is a French country house erected in the early 17th century for the Choisy family, with its plans linked to the architect François Mansart. Built in the 1620s–1630s, it belongs to the architecture of that period and served as a noble residence whose occupants and uses tied it to regional politics, industry, and the upheavals of the Revolution.

The estate was taken into the Choisy family on 1 April 1600 when Jean de Choisy acquired the domain. The principal dwelling was probably constructed for his son, Jean II de Choisy, in the decades that followed; documentary references place the design phase in the mid-1620s and one contemporary account gives building dates from July 1631 to completion in 1637. From its earliest years the house functioned as the family seat.

In 1665 Madame de Choisy, widow of Jean II, lived at Balleroy under a form of exile, and her furnishings and apartment decoration were moved from Paris to the château. The abbé de Choisy (1644–1724) inherited the property in 1679 and later disposed of it around the turn of the eighteenth century to Françoise de Blacas, Princess of Harcourt. In December 1704 the estate was raised to a marquisate for Jacques de La Cour (1665–1725).

Jacques-Claude de La Cour, the second marquis (1694–1773), was sent into internal exile at Balleroy in 1744 by King Louis XV. During his residence he initiated local mining at Littry and established a stoneware pottery, adding an industrial dimension to the estate’s economy. The Revolution brought a sharp break: two sons of Jacques-Claude were arrested at Balleroy and executed by guillotine on 27 March 1794, and the property was confiscated by revolutionary authorities.

After 1794 parts of the patrimony returned to family hands. In 1795 the Comtesse d’Hervilly recovered some holdings and in 1806 shared the estate with her brother Philippe, later fourth marquis (1763–1840). During the early nineteenth century the domain changed hands several times under arrangements that finally restored it to Franz (François) de La Cour in 1827. The La Cour family retained ownership through generations until 1970.

In 1970 Myriam Bénédic sold the château to American businessman Malcolm Forbes. Forbes carried out restoration work, refurnished several interiors in nineteenth-century taste, and converted former service buildings into a balloon museum, while promoting an international hot-air balloon festival on the grounds. After Forbes’s death a foundation run by his heirs held the property until August 2019, when Christopher Forbes sold the château and its furnishings to American entrepreneur Roy Eddleman. The house suffered damage during the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944, though the harm was not extensive. The building, its eastern corner pavilions, the façades and roofs of the outbuildings, the two entrance towers, the moats, gardens and park received legal protection as historic monuments by decree of 18 January 1951, and the park and its avenues were classed as a protected site on 4 March 1943.