A short history about Château de Riolas

There has been a Seigneur de Riolas since at least 1693, in the reign of Louis XIV — the first Lord we can name, from the Toulouse nobiliary archives, is recorded only as N. de Lamothe. Pierre de Lamothe held the title by 1776, a Chevalier de Saint-Louis; by the Revolution, it belonged to Joseph de Lamothe. The oldest stones in the house today — the low-doored, basement-less rooms around the current kitchen — likely date to this earliest period.

In 1857, Vincent Cibiel bought the estate, then more than 500 hectares, as a wedding gift for his daughter Marie on her marriage to Viscount Pierre de Rémusat. Widowed at 25, Marie turned to philanthropy: two free schools for girls nearby, in Lafitte-Vigordane and Fabas, and — during the Franco-Prussian War — a hospital for wounded soldiers, run out of her own Paris home. It was there she met Odilon Lannelongue, the surgeon she married in 1876. He would go on to treat Sarah Bernhardt and Léon Gambetta, lead both the French Academy of Surgery and the Academy of Medicine, and — after Marie's death in 1906 — endow an international surgical medal in her memory that is still awarded today. A fire, and Marie's advancing age, led her to sell the still-unrepaired château in 1904.

Matthieu Bergougnan bought it that year and rebuilt it, adding the Petit Tour to bind the older building to the new. He and his brother Raymond had built Bergougnan & Cie into one of France's leading tire manufacturers — a genuine rival to Michelin, supplying every omnibus in Paris and the French army through the First World War. Raymond was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor in 1903, and Commander in 1922 for his service to national defense. The company was finally sold to Michelin decades later. The Bergougnan family held Riolas until the early 1950s.

What they left behind is a house built for a working estate rather than a court: three formal floors, service rooms and stables, a gentilhommière for guests and senior staff, and a park of wooded walks, meadows, a pond, and wells — the older Lamothe-era building and the newer Bergougnan one tied together by a second, smaller tower alongside the first.

The house passed from the Bergougnan family through several later owners — among them Jacques Patenet, who directed France's official UFO investigation unit, GEIPAN, from 2005 to 2008, and later a young, tech-forward couple who bought it during the pandemic — before it found its way to us, in 2023. Look closely at the wrought iron of the gates and balconies and you'll still find the monogram "M B" worked into the metal: Matthieu Bergougnan's initials, still standing watch.

Three centuries of lords, philanthropists, surgeons, and industrialists shaped this place before we arrived. We're restoring it the way it seems every owner has had to: room by room, patiently, keeping what's worth keeping. We're just the latest chapter.

Our story

Nestled in the rolling meadows of the Haute-Garonne, Château de Riolas is a 19th‑century neoclassical home in the Napoleonic style. Its three floors and twelve bedrooms bear the quiet traces of generations who lived here with refinement. Recently the château has begun a new chapter: the current owners left California to make their home in France, bringing a spirit of adventure and a modern sensibility that respects the estate’s past.

The property includes a gentilhommière guest house, stables, a ménagerie, and a shaded park of mature woods, centered on a tranquil pond and historic wells. Here cultivated elegance is woven into the rhythms of the surrounding countryside. Over time the château has grown from a private family residence into a welcoming refuge for friends — a place where history, nature and hospitality meet, now subtly shaped by a transatlantic presence.