The Duke and Duchess of Windsor’s former Paris home is set to be turned into a museum, Paris City Council has announced. The magnificent building in Bois de Boulogne, known as ‘Villa Windsor’, was home to the former King Edward VIII and his wife, Wallis Simpson, for 30 years until her death in 1986. The mansion was also set to be home to Diana, Princess of Wales, who visited the property with her boyfriend, Dodi Al Fayed, hours before her death in 1997.
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Located in two acres of land just off the 16th arrondissement, the limestone mansion is a 14-bedroom build complete with pillars, wrought iron balconies and arched windows. It has an aristocratic grandeur and elegance, and featured in The Crown’s third season as the Duke of Windsor’s residence.
The villa, which is past its former glory, has been given by Paris City Council to heritage trust The Fondation Monsart, with plans to make the site into ‘a place open to the public on the themes of heritage, culture, nature in the city and urban agriculture’, according to Paris City Council.
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King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson left the UK following his decision to abdicate in order to marry his divorcee lover and rented the magnificent Paris residence from the city from 1956 until 1986. Under the supervision of the newly named Duchess of Windsor, it was re-decorated with the help of Stéphane Boudin, a designer who later had a hand in designing rooms for Jackie Kennedy at the White House.
‘It is hard to believe that there can ever have been an interior more surpassingly clean,’ Vogue photographer Horst V Horst said of the mansion, quoted in Architectural Digest, ‘where crystal was more genuinely scintillating and porcelain more luminous, or where wood and leather, polished to the consistency of precious stone, could more truthfully be said to shine.’ The duke and duchess died in the house in 1972 and 1986, respectively. The Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh and Prince Charles visited the Duke and Duchess of Windsor at the property shortly before the Duke of Windsor’s death.
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Following the tenure of its first royal residents, Mohammed Al Fayed signed a 50-year lease on the villa, and re-decorated the mansion extensively, dubbing it ‘Villa Windsor’. He claims it was destined to become Princess Diana’s home: she and her lover, his son Dodi Al Fayed, visited the mansion for half an hour the day before their tragic deaths.
The Foundation Monsart aims to ‘preserve and promote French heritage’, and ‘manages a large collection of archives and works of art, which are regularly presented to a large audience every year’, according to its website. The announcement comes just days before King Charles III’s and Queen Consort’s state visit to France.
