Understanding the Maison des Jardies in Sèvres

• A wine-grower’s house. The house was built in the late 17th century before being converted in the 18th century into a country house for Parisians seeking to follow Rousseau’s advice and return to nature. Balzac lived in a neighbouring chalet from 1838 to 1840. 

• A place of Republican pilgrimage. Léon Gambetta (1838-1882) was the major figure of Republican resistance to the Prussians during the 1870 Franco-Prussian war. In 1878, excluded from power, he settled in the Maison des Jardies, and died there at the in 1882 aged just 44. Public grief ran high. The house was immediately bequeathed to the State and until the Second World War the French Government and many foreign visitors went on a yearly pilgrimage to pay homage to this ‘secular saint’. A major restoration campaign of the house and garden was carried out from 1990 to 1996.