Château de Valmy

Construction began in 1888 and lasted 12 years, until 1900, with its inauguration in 1904. It is a large, extravagant Art Nouveau bourgeois residence, whose elaborate bell towers, slender turrets, long and asymmetrical windows, bay windows, and floral ceramic medallions form curious, yet harmonious, mixtures of styles. This castle is one of the first private buildings constructed with a reinforced concrete frame.

Pierre Bardou, a very wealthy industrialist from Perpignan who developed the JOB cigarette paper brand created by his father, Jean Bardou, commissioned the architect Viggo Dorph-Petersen to build a castle for each of his three children. For his son Justin, Aubiry Castle, in Céret. For one of his daughters, Camille (died in 1934) married to Charles Ducup de Saint-Paul (1841-1909), Ducup de Saint-Paul Castle (bequeathed in 1934 to the Catholic Church) on the outskirts of Perpignan. Finally, for Jeanne, Valmy Castle in Argelès-sur-Mer. In 1888, Jeanne Bardou married Jules Pams, a major political figure of the Third Republic: lawyer, president of the General Council of the Pyrénées-Orientales, deputy, senator, Minister of Agriculture then Minister of the Interior, in the cabinet of Georges Clemenceau (1917-1920). He was the unfortunate opponent of Raymond Poincaré for the presidency of the Republic in 1913. In 1930, upon the death of Jules Pams, his second wife, Mrs.