The Duchess of Plaisance

There is a sense of mystery and magnetism clinging to the figure of the Duchess of Plaisance. I, like most people, was captivated by her story from the moment I first heard of her but really, I knew almost nothing about her. Most Athenians are familiar with her name and there is even a metro station named after her but most of us have heard only the myths and legends surrounding the duchess, not the historical facts.

I think the hugely popular winter 2011 exhibition in the Byzantine and Christian Museum really dispelled the myth and brought this fascinating figure into a clearer perspective. 

 This museum was an ideal venue to get to know the duchess as it was once her residence,  but I’m getting ahead of the story……

Sophie de Marbois-Lebrun was born in 1785 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where her father, Francois Barbé Marbois,  was serving as the French Consul General.

At around seventeen Sophie married Charles Lebrun, who inherited the title of Duc de Plaisance, or Piacenza as it is known in Italy. In October 1804, Sophie gave birth to a daughter, Eliza LeBrun de Plaisance. There were to be no other children as their marriage was an unhappy one and by the early 1820s it had reached crisis point. By then, matters had degenerated to such a degree that Sophie claimed her husband wanted to kill her and soon after, the couple wisely decided to live separate lives. Sophie chose to live in Italy and Francois in Holland.

Possibly, the duchess's personal unhappiness found an outlet in her championing of the cause of Greek independence. After meeting the man who would become the first head of state of a newly liberated Greece, Count Ioannis Capodistrias, in Paris in 1826, the duchess became a generous benefactor to the Greek liberation effort. 

Within a few years of the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence, both the duchess and her daughter Eliza were well known champions of the Greek cause and found themselves at the forefront of the wave of Philhellenism which was sweeping across Western Europe. Mother and daughter were united toward donating large sums of money to the Greek effort and one source records that Eliza raised a significant proportion of the funds herself by selling her jewelry.

In January 1830 the Genike Ephimerida tes Ellados announced that the 'Duchesse de Plaisance' and her daughter had arrived in Nafplio, the capital of Greece at this time. Their old acquaintance Ioannes Capodistrias had been president of Greece for just over two years, but, for whatever reason, the relationship between Capodistrias and the duchess soured rapidly, and she became outspokenly opposed to his political views and left for Italy. 

After a four year absence, the duchess returned to Greece in 1834 and settled in the new capital of Athens. Greece now had a Bavarian King, Otto, but the duchess chose not to mix freely in court circles and lived at first in a rented mansion on Pireos street. During this period, the duchess seized the opportunity to travel to the middle east and Beirut, where, sadly, her daughter Eliza died. 

Devastated by her daughters death she returned to Athens carrying Eliza's embalmed remains. True to the promise she made to her dying daughter never to leave her side, she kept her coffin in the house where she took up residence.

This caused some concern amongst the Athenians who whispered that she would hold long and animated conversations with her deceased daughter.

Perhaps the duchess's greatest legacy to Greece is through all the building work she commissioned during her life in Athens. Her construction work began when she purchased huge tracts of land from the monastery of Pendeli and engaged the architect Stamatios Kleanthis to design a palace for her on the slopes of Mount Pendeli. According to records, she purchased 1700 stremmata of land off the abbot for seven and a half thousand drachma.

I find it so sad that today this mansion in Pendeli looks forgotten and shuttered, and it’s not an easy task to find it as the signposting is dismal. I know I had visited the mansion many years ago but I really couldn't remember how to find it, or even in what part of northern Athens it was. 

Following a friend's advice to "drive up Pendelis avenue, and keep on driving" I eventually arrived in a plateia where I could ask directions from a local grocers shop. Even so, I still managed to miss the single tiny sign that points to the duchess's Pendeli residence. 

I am sure that unless someone in the Ministry of Culture (or wherever) sits up and takes notice fairly soon, this mansion will crumble and slowly degenerate into a pile of rubble.

Luckily, the Villa Ilissia, completed by Kleanthis in 1848 is not suffering the same fate. Today it houses the Byzantine and Christian museum and, when I visited in 2011, was in the process of external renovation work. However, you can see the similarity in architectural styles between the two palaces. 

Byzantine and Christian Museum

The duchess was a central figure in the social life of Otthonian Athens. Her generosity was legendary and her love of learning meant she sponsored many young Greek women, enabling them to get an education. She also loved to host symposia on topics such as religion and politics.

But the duchess was just a bit too unconventional for Athenian society of her time. Her probable conversion to Judaism, and the sponsoring of the building of a synagogue in Evia would not have been a popular move and would have alienated her from the mainstream.

Later in life Sophie commissioned Kleanthis again, this time to build a final home and resting place for her daughter's remains. Sadly, she would never live to see this Castle of Rodanthi completed as it caught fire and burned to the ground while still under construction. Following the fire the duchess withdrew from public life until her death in 1854 at the age of 69.

I think she probably encouraged the legends and rumours that grew up around her. Obviously, she was a bit of an oddball and some of the outrageous sounding stories were probably based on some semblance of truth. She definitely did have her daughter embalmed and placed in the basement of her house, she did grant titles of nobility at whim to those she liked, she dabbled in mysticism and she had contact with many of the bandits that roamed the hills surrounding Athens but to me, all these traits just add to her glamour and appeal as one of the liveliest and most fascinating figures in early modern Greek history.