Close your eyes and conjure your perfect retreat, one that brings together all the elements you could ever fancy in one creative amalgam without restrictions or limitations. In 1897, when Emmanuel Laurens was a 24-year-old medical student, he found himself in a position to do exactly that: After inheriting a vast fortune from a distant cousin, and 30 acres of the family estate on the banks of the Hérault River in the French Mediterranean town of Agde, he set about to build his own fantasy house known as Château Laurens.
Water was the inspiration for the stained-glass window, wall tiles, and mosaic floor of Emmanuel Laurens’s stunning private bathroom, designed by Eugène Martial Simas.
Mary GaudinInspired by his travels and passions for literature, art, and music, the aesthete created a fantastical abode combining elements of Art Nouveau, ancient Egypt, Moorish culture, and the fin-de-siècle avant garde. Plants and animals were evoked in vivid hues of red, yellow, blue, and green. Painting, sculpture, cabinetmaking, glassmaking, and mosaics were blended into a work of art that was a stage set for his unorthodox life.
Laurens built the chapel-like music room for his wife, an opera singer.
Mary Gaudin
A gilded frieze decorates its ceiling.
Mary GaudinAlthough not trained as an architect, Laurens designed the huge villa himself, aided by a coterie of artists and craftspeople. Master glassmaker Théophile Laumonnerie created the stained-glass windows; the walls were painted by artist and decorator Eugène Dufour; painter Eugène Martial Simas dreamt up the intricately tiled bathroom. Furniture was designed by the likes of Italian cabinetmaker Carlo Bugatti, decorator Paul Arnaveilhe,
and artist Léon Cauvy. The romantic, old-world scheme also featured modern innovations including hot and cold running water, heat, and electricity produced by a hydroelectric turbine powered by the Hérault River.
On the walls of the large ceremonial staircase, Egyptian lotuses and cranes mix with Art Nouveau–inflected curves and flowers for a rich fusion of East and West.
Mary GaudinAs can sometimes happen in these stories, Laurens’s lavish lifestyle and entertaining depleted his fortune into bankruptcy and he was forced to sell Château Laurens in 1938 (although he and his wife, singer Louise Blot, occupied a few rooms there until his death in 1959). The deserted house suffered decades of neglect, damage, and theft before it was purchased in 1994 by the city of Agde. After a painstakingly thorough 20-year renovation undertaken by the local government, Château Laurens finally reopened to the public in 2023. Today, visitors can experience the world of Emmanuel Laurens, who sought in his home, a friend wrote, “to satisfy the pleasures of the noblest senses [where] everything speaks to the imagination and our intellect is constantly awakened by the charm of lines, colors and sounds.”
THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN VOLUME 15 OF FREDERIC MAGAZINE. CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE!
