The Château du Grand Jardin is located in Joinville, in Haute-Marne. Since 1978, the site has been the property of the Haute-Marne departmental council, which has carried out major works to rehabilitate the site: the pavilion has been restored, a Renaissance-style garden has been recreated, and the Romantic park has been enhanced. Between 1533 and 1546, Claude de Lorraine, 1st Duke of Guise, had the Château du Grand Jardin built, a large pleasure pavilion, a jewel of Renaissance architecture. It then complemented the fortified castle located on the heights of Joinville, the Château d'En-Haut, home of the lords of Joinville, sold and destroyed during the Revolution. Located on flat land below, the Château du Grand Jardin also received the name Château d'En-Bas, but the luxuriance of its large garden quickly made its reputation and name. Dedicated to the festivities and receptions of the Dukes of Guise, to rest and pleasure, the Château du Grand Jardin welcomed prestigious guests: in November 1546, "François I came to spend the All Saints' Day celebrations in Joinville, where he was magnificently treated by the Duke of Guise, lord of the named place of Joinville". We can assume that Claude de Lorraine took advantage of this occasion to welcome the sovereign with the customary pomp and make him the guest of honour at the inauguration of his brand new pleasure pavilion, the year 1546 appearing twice on the pavilion. Joinville also saw the passage of Henri II and his wife Catherine de Medici, François II and his wife Marie Stuart (granddaughter of Claude de Lorraine), Charles IX, Henri de Valois, future Henri III, the Third Prince of Condé, Louis XIII accompanied by Cardinal Richelieu, etc. When the elder branch of the Guise family died out, on the death of Marie de Lorraine, known as Mademoiselle de Guise, the estate was passed to the Dukes of Orléans, who owned it until the Revolution. The pavilion nearly disappeared in the middle of the 18th century, to make way for a gardener's house and a dovecote. Fortunately, this plan was not accomplished; the pavilion was preserved, but began a slow interior transformation, changing from the configuration of a party pavilion to that of a bourgeois home. The gardens evolved towards other uses: food crops and a nursery of "trees to plant the roads" was established there. However, the major upheaval experienced by these gardens was to be reduced by half of their surface area, by the construction of a royal road passing through their center. The plot thus isolated from the pavilion became a public promenade, the Parc du Petit Bois. In 1791, the cavalry officer Raphaël-Hippolyte-François Parmentier de Thosse (c. 1751-1832) acquired the estate: the enjoyment of his new property was short-lived: a nobleman, he had to flee to England, while his wife and two daughters faced this period of unrest in Joinville. The last great family to own it was that of the Meuse ironmaster Pierre-Hyacinthe-Félix Salin (1809-1878), who acquired the estate in 1856. Major works were undertaken: construction of six large dormer windows, a roof balustrade and a main staircase with double flights; new interior fittings were carried out. In the gardens, the moats were filled in to create an artificial river and a water feature. In 1907, the Salin family asked the Nancy nurseryman and landscaper Jean-Joseph Picoré to redesign the garden with exotic tree species that were popular at the time. Little by little, the pavilion disappeared from outside view, protected by a curtain of greenery. A romantic park, designed as a succession of paintings, offers picturesque views of the pavilion.