The park
Different gardens have succeeded each other since the XNUMXth century around the castle...
When Louis XV decides to have the castle rebuilt, he asks the architect Jacques-Ange Gabriel to reflect on the project of a garden. The garden designed by Gabriel, with its five terraces and its embroidery beds, was never completed. The quincunxes of lime trees that frame the garden and a small round pond originally set up on the terrace of Marie-Antoinette, then moved to the center of the Jardin des Roses, remain from this project.
From 1810, the Emperor entrusted the architect Berthault with the management of the development of the exterior spaces. The Emperor's desire is to "link, as soon as possible, the palace with the forest, which is the true garden and which constitutes all the pleasure of this residence." On a large park of 700 hectares connecting the garden to the forest, Berthault created: the famous Beaux-Monts avenue and Marie-Louise's cradle, a set of green trellises in the shape of a cradle which leads to the heart of the forest.
The castle park de Compiègne, as it was designed by Gabriel in 1755, did not include a specific project for the installation of sculpted works. The first two statues were installed at the top of the ramp, the wounded Philoctetes by Dupaty and the Venus of the Capitol by Chinard, in the First Empire, under the direction of Berthault. Today, the castle garden de Compiègne has around thirty sculpted works. They come from salons or special orders... Some works are original, but the park also hosts many copies of the antique such as the Venus Génitrix by Barthélémy Frison or the Venus of the Capitol by Joseph Chinard.
