Here’s the wonderful real story of this unique château: a castle, an organ, a possessive relationship and a ghost… that’s almost a Victorian novel:
The château d’Ilbarritz is on the top of a little hill in Biarritz. His owner was always odd and authoritarian. The workmen were ordered to be silent and the architect, Gustave Huguenin, worked under the most strict confidentiality by express requirement of the lord. He didn’t wan’t to be disturbed at all, and avoided all receptions. He never frequented the balls or carried out the society duties his status and fortune demanded.
Baron Albert de l’Espée, misanthropist and millionaire, developed an impulsive passion for the organ that led him to entrench himself in the solitude of his many, scattered all over France, properties. Ilbarritz was imagined as a giant theatre, specifically built to house the biggest organ ever factured by Cavaillé-Coll for a single person, paying attention to its acoustics (all the stairways in the château were made of wood for this reason, ie). That organ was one of Cavaillé-Coll finest masterpieces and counted with the best technology at the time: 4 manual keyboards and pedal (all of them mechanically pulled) and 78 decks.
When the Baron met actress Bian Duhamel, 20 years younger, he fell for her immediately. De l’Espée indulged her every whim, in exchange of the young lady to be at his disposal. That’s why he ordered to build the Villa des Sables in his lands, for Biana and her mother, and a passage connecting the villa to the château for Bian to go to the Baron’s residence whenever she wanted.
However, the outreagous noble began to force her lover to never leave her luxurious villa. Since January 1898, the actress tried to break free several times to enjoy the lively soirées of Biarritz. This led the Baron, crazy of wrath, to confine Bian in the Villa des Sables and to install an enormous spotlight on the roof of his château to keep the villa watched all day and night. This same spotlight and its blinding effects caused the Queen of Serbia’s car accident a few days later. Duhamel eventualy abandonned the baron a month later.
It all began to go downhill from here for de l’Espée. In 1903 he dismantled the giant organ and gave it back to Cavaillé-Coll. In 1919, the instrument was installed in the basilica of Sacré Coeur in Paris, where it still remains. Three years later, in 1906, he ordered to install another organ in Ilbarritz, factured by Mutin, a bit smaller but more improved.
Although nowadays this second organ can be seen in the church of Usurbil (Gipuzkoa) and Ilbarritz remains empty, word is that in stormy evenings the dull sound of the organ can be heard, coming from the château…
