When Spanish model Nieves Álvarez married the same man for the third time, the Lebanese businessman Bill Saad, he shouted through the laughter: „Finally, third time getting married!" After the civil procedure at a notary and an Orthodox ceremony in the Greek cathedral in Paris, the third celebration was held at a place that remembers far bigger stories than one wedding - the Ferrières château, just outside Paris.

The château was built between 1855 and 1859 on the orders of Baron James de Rothschild, from the banking dynasty that shaped Europe's economic history. When he hired the British architect Joseph Paxton, the mighty banker's instruction was short and cut to the size of his ego: „Build me a Mentmore, but twice as big." The result is a château ringed by 30 square kilometres of forest, with 80 guest bedrooms and lodging for another 100 members of staff. The kitchen was separate from the main building, and an underground train carried the hot food to the dining halls. Wealth has always known how to be practical and absurd at the same time.

The château was opened in 1862 by Napoleon III and his wife, the Spanish aristocrat Eugénie de Montijo. But the building saw darker moments too. In 1870, on the eve of France's defeat by Prussia, this is where Bismarck met the French minister Jules Favre and demanded the surrender of Alsace and Lorraine. During the Second World War the château was occupied by the Nazis, and after the war the Rothschild heirs sealed off the occupied wing. History is not erased by renovation - it is only shut behind a door.

In the 1970s Baroness Marie-Hélène de Rothschild put the château back on the world map with legendary parties. In 1971 she staged a celebration of Marcel Proust's centenary, attended by Princess Grace of Monaco, Audrey Hepburn, Brigitte Bardot and Elizabeth Taylor with Richard Burton. Photographer Cecil Beaton immortalised the guests dressed in Yves Saint-Laurent, Dior and Valentino.

The peak came on 12 December 1972, with the legendary surrealist dinner. Salvador Dalí designed the headpieces - for Audrey Hepburn he made a birdcage, and for the hostess an imposing mask of a stag with eyes weeping tears of diamonds. Three years later the Rothschild couple gave the château to the University of Paris and moved into a house they built in the surrounding forest.

Today another wedding has passed through those same halls, and the château has resurfaced in the magazines. The question that remains is a different one: how many people today even remember that behind the splendour stands an occupation, and a sealed wing, and a history that was not only balls and diamonds? Splendour photographs beautifully. But the story is always more complicated than the frame.