Bookable
An Apollonaut travel guide
The place behind the detail.
A French-style mansion, a garden laid out on one long axis and a collection of French furniture and clocks offer several ways into the story of Nemours.
On this page
A château in Delaware
Alfred I. du Pont created Nemours in 1909–10 as a gift for his second wife, Alicia, and named it after the French town linked to his great-great-grandfather, Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours.
Carrère and Hastings designed the mansion in the Louis XVI style. Built to resemble a French château, it has 105 rooms on four floors.
A French formal garden
The gardens are patterned after those around the Petit Trianon at Versailles. Their central axis runs about a third of a mile from the mansion, with fountains, pools, statuary, a maze garden and the Colonnade of 1926.
Further out are the Sunken Gardens, designed by Alfred Victor du Pont with Gabriel Masséna, and the Temple of Love with Houdon’s statue of Diana.
A restored estate
After a three-year restoration of the house, its collections and the gardens, Nemours Estate reopened on 1 May 2008. It shares its grounds with Nemours Children’s Hospital, Delaware, and both belong to the Nemours Foundation.
This history belongs to the place and the people who shaped it. The History page offers a longer introduction, and the timeline gives a short route through selected milestones.
Read at the source
Sources & further reading
Links lead to the original publishers.
