Set on a sprawling, 185-acre estate northwest of Paris, the 17th-century chateau was once home to the noble French Marshal Gen. Emmanuel de Grouchy, exiled to Philadelphia after leading Napoleon’s troops to defeat in the Battle of Waterloo.
Nearly two centuries and a host of aristocratic French owners later, American real estate mogul Olivia Hsu Decker bought the property in 1999 — four years before “The Da Vinci Code” — the book — hit the shelves.
Today, “People come with the book in hand and they literally go through each paragraph,” she said, adding that some even go so far as to recite the dialogue. Those visitors, Decker said, “don’t like being reminded” of the thin line that separates fact from fiction.