Château de Maubreuil

Surviving elements of the earlier estate include a dovecote, a private chapel and a 17th-century hunting pavilion.

The old château was burned during the French Revolution. In 1815 the heavily indebted last heir of the previous line sold the property to Félix Cossin, a wealthy Nantes shipowner involved in privateering and the slave trade. He (or his son of the same name) demolished the remaining ruins and built the present château in the elegant early-19th-century style.

Through marriage the estate later came into the possession of the de Dion family. Jules-Albert de Dion (Marquis de Dion, 1856–1946), pioneer of the French automobile industry and co-founder of the De Dion-Bouton company in 1883, as well as a politician, inherited and owned Maubreuil. In 1934 he sold it to the departmental council of Loire-Inférieure. A sanatorium for respiratory diseases was built in the park and inaugurated in 1938; it later became a centre for functional rehabilitation and aftercare.

In the 2010s the château and its dependencies were sold and acquired by the Nantes entrepreneur Philippe Rousse. After seven years of careful restoration it reopened on 12 December 2019 as a five-star hotel (member of Small Luxury Hotels of the World), featuring suites and apartments, a Cinq Mondes partner spa and the gourmet restaurant “La Table du Marquis”. It is the first five-star hotel in the Nantes metropolitan area.