On 18 October 2025, a new exhibition is due to open at the Château de Chantilly, organised jointly by the Musée Condé and the Prince’s Palace of Monaco Archives and Library, and dedicated to Princess Maria Caterina Brignole-Sale (1739-1813), who became Princess of Condé in 1808. Heir to one of the most senior families in the Genoese aristocracy, Maria Caterina married Prince Honoré III of Monaco in 1757. Her husband’s tyrannical personality led her to ask for a legal separation, which was granted in 1770. The princess found comfort in her true friend and lover, Prince Louis-Joseph de Bourbon-Condé, owner of the Palais-Bourbon in Paris and the Château de Chantilly. Maria Caterina busily set about making major changes, enlisting the services of some of the greatest artists of the age. The Anglo-Chinese gardens at her countryside retreat in Betz were widely considered a masterpiece of the style, popular at the time. But the French Revolution turned the couple’s blissful life upside down. The princess remained with the Prince of Condé throughout the harsh campaigns that rolled across the European continent. She played a key role in the command of the armies and sacrificed her personal fortune in the cause of war. Having survived those ordeals, the two lovers went into exile in England, where they finally married in 1808. It was there that the princess died in 1813.
