Modern Living: Chateau Menagerie

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Which of the following rates after the Eiffel Tower and Orly Airport as France's biggest tourist attraction?

A. The Louvre

B. Versailles

C. The Château de Thoiry

The correct answer is C, a fact that is sure to dumbfound anyone who visited the museum-like Château de Thoiry prior to 1967—or before the historic building became the center of what must be the most unusual animal farm in the Western world.

It all started as a save-a-castle plan. Built in the 16th century in the lush lowlands 30 miles west of Paris, the château has long claimed a treasury of priceless furniture, rare tapestries and a collection of 60,000 documents and letters from kings, ministers and literary figures. Chopin's piano—a gift from George Sand—graced the gilded music room; the original manuscripts of two unpublished Chopin waltzes were discovered in a linen closet.

Gamy Strategy. None of this, however, kept the mighty roof from leaking, helped wash the 10,000 windowpanes, or prevented the spacious garden from going to weed. "Without a staff of at least 25 persons," says the castle's owner, the Count de la Panouse, "the domain falls apart." To finance the estate, the château was opened to the public in 1966, but the 20,000 visitors it drew that year were not enough to pay the bills. It was the count's son Paul, now 26, who persuaded his father to let him turn one end of the vast grounds into a zoo filled with bears, tigers, kangaroos, wolves and elephants. The young viscount's gamy strategy worked: in 1967, the number of visitors rose to 100,000.

Next came the creation of a wild-game preserve. Wire fences were set up to isolate the 51 lions and a pack of hyenas. Other, less aggressive animals—ostriches, rhinoceroses, elephants and zebras —were simply set loose to live together.

As the number of visitors increased, so did the innovations. A vivarium housing a host of giant spiders and a reptile collection (starring an 80-year-old alligator) was built in the vaulted chateau cellars; a special baby animal zoo usurped one corner of the grounds; 280 monkeys, brought all the way from Southeast Asia, were set loose and swinging in the 15 acres of beech, oak and hickory trees. Parking facilities were established, as well as a restaurant, picnic area, gas station and that necessary adjunct to the tourist trade, a photo and souvenir shop.

The total cost was $3,000,000. But with 1,000,000 visitors in 1969, Thoiry is quickly paying back the investment.

Traumatized Animals. Science too will profit from the Thoiry menagerie if the viscount has his way: he plans to study the behavior of the birds and beasts on the plush grounds of the château. "In nature," Paul explains, "the animals vanish before you can really watch them, and in zoos they are so traumatized that their behavior is never authentic. But here at the Chateau de Thoiry, we have particularly favorable conditions."

Never more so than on one recent night, when some 1,000 paying visitors to the château gathered in the verdant gardens to hear the first in a projected series of orchestral concerts. The program, chosen by the viscount himself, suited both the occasion and the location: Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals, Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, and Haydn's celebration to The Bear.