HOURS OF HER OWN
HOSPITALITY PROJECTS
At Château de Montvillargenne, the past has been given a second act, one where Jeanne de Rothschild's own retreat, now reborn as Jeanne & the Forest, France's largest château-hotel.
Room 226 was Jeanne de Rothschild's own retreat before it became anyone else's to book. The headboard curves in lacquered red across the wall behind the bed, its brass fittings catching what little light the room lets in, a single opaline globe on a slender articulated arm doing most of the work after dark. Beside it, a striped bolster of a side table holds a candelabra shaped like birds mid perch, tassels hanging still against black and gold.
Downstairs, the register shifts without losing its nerve. The indoor pool sits beneath a wall of glass, curved at one end and edged in blue mosaic, the water dark and still enough to double the room above it. Ivy hangs from the rafters in long unbroken strands, brushing close to the surface, turning the space into something closer to a clearing than a leisure facility. Astroturf runs the length of the poolside in place of stone or tile, softening every footstep. Woven hammocks line the water's edge instead of loungers, angled towards the courtyard beyond the glass rather than towards each other, each one built for a party of one.
In the dining room, the mood turns opulent without turning loud. A painted floral ceiling spills down towards the cornice, dark and gilded, caught twice over in a pair of gold framed mirrors so the blooms seem to multiply across the walls. Ostrich feathers in deep teal stand by the window, catching the same low gold light that pools across the herringbone floor beneath tables laid close but never touching.
Elsewhere, a winter garden room holds its own quiet: dark bronzed walls, a vaulted ceiling painted the colour of egg yolk, a chandelier trailing ivy rather than crystal. Furniture upholstered in faded green sits low and worn in, gathered around a single anemone in a glass carafe.
None of it performs. Every room closes rather than opens, built for the guest who wants to be found by no one.
