Chateau de Malmaison. Château de Malmaison is a French château near the western bank of the Seine about 15 kilometres west of the centre of Paris in Rueil-Malmaison.
Formerly the residence of Empress Joséphine de Beauharnais, along with the Tuileries it was the headquarters of the French government from 1800 to 1802, and Napoleon's last residence in France at the end of the Hundred Days in 1815. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the estate became a summer residence of Edward Tuck, the Vice Consul of the American Legation in Paris.
Joséphine de Beauharnais bought the manor house in April 1799 for herself and her husband, General Napoléon Bonaparte, the future Napoléon I of France, at that time away fighting the Egyptian Campaign. Malmaison was a run-down estate, seven miles west of central Paris that encompassed nearly 150 acres of woods and meadows.
Upon his return, Bonaparte expressed fury at Joséphine for purchasing such an expensive house with the money she had expected him to bring back from the Egyptian campaign. The house, for which she had paid well over 300,000 francs, needed extensive renovations, and she spent a fortune doing so. Malmaison would bring great happiness to the Bonapartes.
Joséphine's daughter, Hortense would call it a delicious spot. Joséphine endeavored to transform the large estate into the most beautiful and curious garden in Europe, a model of good culti