Jacques Garcia: Thirty Years of Passion: Château Du Champ de Bataille

French interior designer and collector Jacques Garcia has dedicated the past thirty years to restoring the Château du Champ de Bataille, an expansive property in Normandy that has become one of France's treasured houses of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century architecture, furniture, and garden design. He populated its marble halls and elegant, baroque salons with a priceless collection of paintings, sculptures, porcelain, silver, and furniture, including many pieces that were originally housed in the collections of the French court.

The vast gardens, probably designed by Le Nôtre, have been considerably expanded to include a hydraulic system rivaled only by that at Versailles, which supplies a prodigious system of fountains and reflecting pools. Classical temples, an outdoor antique theater, marble statuary, and garden follies enliven the alleyways alongside topiary sphinxes and fragrant bowers of roses and wisteria.