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• 1 media/1280px-France_illustrée_I_p184.png 2017-05-27T10:53:03-07:00 Ferney 24 Letters that refer to or were written at Ferney. image_header 2017-09-22T23:40:03-07:00 46.252076,6.0973562 Ferney-Voltaire (Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names ID: 7009178), a French suburb of Geneva, is in the canton of Ain, in the country of Gex, on the Swiss border, to the north of the airport of Geneva-Cointrin.
  
  In 1758 Voltaire, then aged 64, purchased the estate of Ferney even though it was then, in his words, a “wretched village”.   The area surrounding the estate had few residents, little industry, and was in dire financial need. In several letters, Voltaire expressed concern for the poor residents of the town and criticized their exploitation by a local church official who was known to use his position to extort extravagant tithes by violent means (Davidson 296). Voltaire frequently expressed a sense of responsibility for improving the lives of the local peasants; by 1759, he personally employed the majority of Ferney’s residents (Davidson 298). 
  
  Voltaire’s extensive renovations on the dilapidated property began immediately after his purchase of the property in 1758.  Initial renovations on the château lasted until 1762.  Voltaire’s improvements included a 300-seat theater and a church, the latter of which was inscribed with the message “DEO EREXIT VOLTAIRE” (“ERECTED TO GOD BY VOLTAIRE”), an eternal and imposing reminder of Voltaire’s contribution to the town.
  
  It soon became all too clear to Voltaire that his château was too small to accommodate his many visitors.  In 1765 he recruited the architect, Léonard Racle  (30 November 1736 – 8 January 1791) who added two wings to the building, giving it its definitive aspect.   For almost twenty years, until his death in 1778, Voltaire, hosted a large number of high-ranking visitors, admirers, and international dignitaries who documented their visits in their correspondence as well as in their own publications. Furthermore, as Jean-Claude Bonnet notes:

  Inspirant un style nouveau d’entretiens littéraires, ‘la visite à Ferney’ devient aussi un sujet journalistique. La Gazette d’Utrecht décrit le séjour du duc de Villars. La Correspondance littéraire annononce annonce la venue des  personnages célèbres en une véritable chronique. [1] (Bonnet 133)   

  Shortly after his passing, Madame Denis sold the Ferney estate to Charles Michel, Marquis de Villette (9 December 1736 – 7 July 1793, French writer and politician and a protégé of Voltaire), apart from her uncle’s library, which was sold to Catherine the Great, and carefully transported to Saint Petersburg under the supervision of Voltaire’s secretary, Wagnière (Davidson xix).  The empress was so deeply moved by Voltaire’s death that she requested drawings, copies of plans, and details about Ferney’s interior in order to create an exact replica of the château near Tsarskoe Selo[2]. In a letter to Grimm (30 November [11 December] 1778) she wrote: “you need to tell me how each room in the castle was furnished and what was its purpose, so that my santa casa, as well as that of Lorette, may be a true representation”  (Stroeve 17).
  
  In honor of its most famous resident, the town of Ferney is today known as Ferney-Voltaire. The estate is currently owned and maintained by the Centre des monuments nationaux http://www.chateau-ferney-voltaire.fr/en, the French government body dedicated to conservation and preservation of historical landmarks. For more information and current pictures of Ferney-Voltaire, visit of the Tourism Office of Ferney-Voltaire: http://www.paysdevoltaire.com//en/discovery/voltaires-chateau.html
   
  Danielle Mihram, April 2017
  
  Sources:
  Bonnet, Jean-Claude.  “La Visite à Ferney.” Le Siècle de Voltaire – Hommage à René Pomeau, edited by Christiane Mervaud and Sylvain Menat, Vol. 1, The Voltaire Foundation, 1987, 126-135.
  
  Davidson, Ian. Voltaire: A Life. New York, NY: Pegasus, 2010.
  
  Stroev, Alexandre. Voltaire / Catherine II – Correspondance 1763-1778, Non-Lieu: Association des Amis de Paris-Méditerranée, 2006.
   

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  [1] “Inspiring a new style of literary conversations, 'the visit to Ferney' also becomes a journalistic subject. The Gazette d’Utrecht describes the sojourn of the Duke of Villars at Ferney. The Correspondance littéraire announces the coming of the famous personages in a full-fledged chronicle.”

   

  [2] The town Tsarskoe Selo (now namedPushkin) is located 24 Kilometers (15 miles) south from the center of Saint-Petersburg.  It contains a former Russian residence of the imperial family.

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  Ferney appears in the following letters.
  Ferney appears in the following indexes.

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