Game tour – Games and fun in the great outdoors

Take your family on a journey of discovery through the outdoor games designed for the castle grounds by the Princes of Condé and later developed by the Duke of Aumale. Shooting ranges, leisure areas, and playgrounds from days gone by reveal how people entertained themselves from the 17th to the 19th century. The tour ends with a life-size game of goose, allowing you to learn while having fun and sharing a joyful moment in the heart of the park.

When Chantilly Park Was a Royal Playground

In the 17th and 18th centuries, games held the same place in the gardens as sculptures: to entertain and amaze the princes’ guests. Chantilly boasted a profusion of them, many of which foreshadowed our modern-day pastimes: the ring toss, the precursor to the carousel; the wheel of fortune, the precursor to the Ferris wheel; the game of mail, the precursor to golf; and the game of palm, from which tennis descended. A tour of the park reveals traces of these games throughout its grounds.

The Life-Size Game of the Goose

Created around 1737, Chantilly’s famous Game of the Goose stretched 478 meters, featuring a prison, a maze, a bridge, and an inn, with each square marked by a stone topped with a goose. Having fallen into obscurity, it was rediscovered in the 1980s and subsequently restored. The tour concludes with a game on this reconstructed course.