A French court ordered Friday that a collection of items once owned by a member of France’s defunct royal family must be handed back to his heirs, reports FRANCE 24.
However, the heirs of Henri d’Orleans, who styled himself as the Count of Paris, failed in their bid to win control of his former estates, including two châteax and a chapel, donated by the Count to a public foundation in the 1970s.
Olivier Baratelli, the heirs’ lawyer, told the AFP news agency, that the items to be returned are valued in the order of “tens of millions of euros” and consisted mostly of artworks.
Henri d’Orleans, a descendant of King Louis-Philippe and the former head of the Orleanist royal line, left a vast amount of his estate to the Saint-Louis Foundation in 1976. He died in 1999.
As well as significant paintings and antique furniture, the foundation’s properties, which are managed by the French Interior Ministry, include the Château d’Amboise and the Château Bourbon-L'Archambault, as well as the Royal Chapel at Dreux, the traditional burial place of the French royal house of Orléans.
The count also gave the foundation jewellery estimated to be worth 50 million euros.
Read more of this report from FRANCE 24.