The splendid reinvention of Abbaye des Vaux de Cernay

In a valley in the Chevreuse Regional Natural Park, about 45km south-west of Paris, past the clogged-up Boulevard Périphérique and through low-lying industrial areas, there has for centuries been a hidden arcadia known as the Abbaye des Vaux de Cernay. Set on 75 hectares, with sprawling parklands and a large lake hedged by woodlands, the site has lived many lives. It was first a 12th-century Cistercian abbey and religious community, visited, it’s said, by medieval French kings and queens. Later, in the 19th century, it was reborn as the summer home of the illustrious salonnière Baroness Charlotte de Rothschild, an accomplished watercolourist who counted Honoré de Balzac, Henri Rousseau and Édouard Manet among her friends. Chopin taught her how to play the piano.

Briefly occupied by the Germans during the second world war, and then by the Americans, the site – a unique blend of medieval relics and neo-gothic halls – stands today as a registered historic monument. But its halcyon days had waned in recent years: until recently, the property served as a tired-looking three-star hotel, kept afloat by weekend weddings.

That was its status when Laurent de Gourcuff, founder of the Paris Society hospitality group, visited in the dead of winter in 2019. For a decade, he had been looking to open a countryside hotel, a self-contained escape from Paris designed in the spirit of Soho Farmhouse, the Cotswolds getaway owned by Soho House group that serves its London members. His search had grown long due to its strict criteria: he wanted history, but not a palace; water for boating and promenades; and it had to be within an hour of Paris.

“We have nothing close to the city that is like a home away from home, whereas London has at least 20 properties,” de Gourcuff explains during an end-of-summer day we spend together at the Abbaye des Vaux de Cernay. He recalls arriving there and walking the length of the drive through the parklands. He saw the buildings: the skeletal ruin of a medieval church, with its crumbling gritstone walls and quatrefoil window, and the former priory, a foursquare building with two angular wings and chimney-dotted gable roofs, against the lake. By the time he arrived at the front door, he knew he had found his new hotel. “It was perfect, even in the spareness of winter,” he says. 

He wanted history, but not a palace; water for boating and promenades; and it had to be within an hour of Paris

The Abbaye des Vaux de Cernay is the Paris Society’s 79th venue, and its most ambitious hotel project to date. The group is known for a raft of trendy nightclubs and restaurants, such as Raspoutine, Castel, Monsieur Blue, Girafe and Gigi – and, most recently, the mythic art nouveau restaurant Maxim’s. Rapid growth has encompassed the roll-out of repeat concepts in St Tropez and Courchevel. It’s a bit formulaic – eye-catching design, decent food, good vibes – but it has been working: Accor, the French hospitality conglomerate, acquired full ownership of the group last year.

The abbey has proven to be de Gourcuff’s most remarkable feat: a €60mn restoration project of significant public interest. After shoring up the outer buildings, replacing windows and rewiring all the electricity, there were also elements from the two Rothschild eras to preserve. First, Charlotte de Rothschild had rescued the property from the ruins it had been in since the order abandoned it during the French Revolution, enlisting the family architect, Félix Langlais, to oversee its rebirth. Under her watch, the 17th-century building was renovated with vast halls and carved vaulted ceilings that imitated those of the 12th-century chapterhouse on site – one of the largest still-intact such houses in France. 

The Abbaye estate then passed on to Charlotte’s grandson, Baron Henri de Rothschild, who landscaped the parklands and completed further conservation work on the medieval church ruins. He also updated the first-floor private apartments and modernised the powder rooms with the help of the famous British royal plumbing firm George Jennings. In typical turn-of-the-century style, Henri converted his grandmother’s stud-farm stables into a garage. Today, the cavernous halls and gothic fireplaces, as well as remnants of Charlotte’s Cordoba wallpapers and Henri’s wall-to-floor antique boiserie, remain, as does the neo-gothic oratory with its original ornate organ in one of the grand salons.

To temper the medieval mood, de Gourcuff enlisted his childhood friend Cordélia de Castellane, the artistic director of Baby Dior and Dior Maison who has a burgeoning second career as an interior decorator. De Castellane is known for her warm and lively interiors – she favours a pastiche of print and colour that recalls le style anglais in the tradition of David Hicks and Nancy Lancaster. She is also a proud Anglophile (her mother grew up in England) and envisaged the hotel as a British country manor with typical cosy, lived-in grandeur and adjacent outdoorsy pastimes. “I wanted to do something that is not a hotel; it’s like coming to a beautiful home,” says de Castellane. “It was important that this be a very comfortable [place], nothing stiff, where you don’t know where to sit.” Her responsibilities eventually went beyond the decor; she also created the mudroom full of Wellington boots for guests to borrow, and the proper teatime service in the summer salon. 

In the former hunting salon, now a restaurant, she did away with the trophies – “we are all against hunting here; I am very strict on this” – and cloaked the walls in a forest-green velvet that echoes the plush banquettes. Medieval-style chandeliers hang overhead, and a carpet with a fallen-leaf motif blankets the floor. 

De Castellane has livened up the stone foundations in the other outsized salons with a commingling of William Morris wallpapers and oriental rugs, brightly coloured ikat-print textiles, bold tartan walls and leopard-motif carpets. All are furnished comfortably with velvet sofas, leather club chairs and an eclectic arrangement of vintage furniture. She’s been sourcing antiques for the project for four years and jokes that she cleaned out the flea markets. “I wanted it to seem as if everything had always been there,” she says. Baroness Charlotte gets her dues, too: a grand piano sits in the middle of the music salon where she used to host soirées. De Castellane says the archives suggested her interiors taste leaned toward the sombre: “She had a lot of jacquard and tapestries. I brought back a bit more fun.”

Guests will take their breakfast in the hallowed chapterhouse, which de Castellane has furnished with church-pew-inspired banquettes. The reference was – de Castellane is not ashamed to admit it – the Tudoresque Great Hall in Harry Potter, though she has upholstered all the seating in a blushing-pink jacquard. “It’s so grand and impressive, [but] this is a place for families, too, and I wanted it to feel magical and not too pretentious,” she says. “We cannot take ourselves too seriously.”

Fifty-five guest rooms span the two upper floors and, in the bourgeois tradition, the first floor houses the most spacious suites, including the 113sq m former apartments of the baroness. The darkness of the boiserie added by Henri for his wife, Mathilde, is tempered by pretty 18th-century floral wallpapers from the archives of the storied French upholsterer Braquenié. A sumptuous blue-velvet floral motif from Pierre Frey covers the walls in the anteroom. In the spirit of a residence, few rooms are fitted out the same on this floor, and many evince a lighter touch – one particularly charming example stands out for its sea-foam green and butter-yellow checks. Upstairs, smaller bedrooms with cosy nooks that follow the configuration of the roof are tucked away under the eaves. In the former stables are a further 47 accommodations, animated by toile de Jouy-esque wallpapers designed by de Castellane, alongside jaunty stripes and tartans.

Aside from the beauty of the nearby forest, the sleepy region has little to tempt guests over a full weekend. That’s why both de Gourcuff and de Castellane have insisted the hotel be self-contained: in addition to the three restaurants, with another to follow next year, there is a pool and a spa, as well as tennis, pétanque, boating, arcade games and a 49-seat cinema. There’s even a tutor on site to help with homework, and outside contractors will visit the grounds to set up a brocante and a vegetable- market truck on weekends, so the Parisians don’t head home to an empty pantry. “In England, people live in the country, and there is a way of life with hotels and pubs and antiques shops, but country villages in France, it’s like everyone is hiding,” says de Castellane. “I wanted this to be like a small village – so you have it all.” 

abbayedesvauxdecernay.com, from €300