The place and its history…

The birth of the château

The Château des Comtes de Challes, a stronghold of France, was built by the de Challes family, an ancient family of knights who owned several fiefs (a de Challes was recorded to have taken part in a tournament in Chambery in 1348). They held high, middle and low jurisdiction over the whole district, and got feudal rents from about thirty parishes.

The Château des Comtes de Challes and History

The de Challes family died out when Louis died in 1590. Known as Sully le Savoyard, he was a great reformer of finance and justice during the reign of Duke Emmanuel-Phillibert. One of his children, Hector, saw Challes be set up as a barony in 1618. President of the Senate, ambassador to Henri IV, he had nineteen children.
One of them was the Jesuit who gave his name to a big book on mathematics (which includes the famous "de Chales" relation), a science that Louis XIV assigned him to come and teach in Paris. The whole family was laden with honours: embassies, the Senate, revenue courts, episcopal sees and military offices. In 1669, Challes was raised to a marquisate.
It is known that Jean-Jacques Rousseau gave music lessons to a Miss Gasparine Balthazarde de Challes.
The third and last Marquis de Challes died in 1777.
The inheritance went to the Millet de Faverges branch who did not take any advantage of it, as the revolutionary turmoil forced the owner to run away after burying his treasure.

The owners of this château de France

Sold as a national estate, the château was bought by the former steward of the Marquis, a lawyer named Balmain. Having married one of Balmain's daughters, Doctor Domenguet, the King's and royal family's doctor in Savoy, professor of medicine, chemistry and botany, honorary army medical officer, became the owner of the château. He was the one who discovered the spring on April 11, 1841. He studied it, experimented with it and introduced it to the learned world.

On March 25, 2002, the Trèves family acquired the château and started major renovation and improvement work which has turned it into a château de France registered among the "Châteaux et Hôtels de France" today.