The Castle
Abbadie gave his domain the name Abbadia, which is the name still used in Basque. However in French it is usually referred to as Chateau d'Abbadie or Domaine d'Abbadia, and locally it is not unusual for it to be called le Chateau d'Antoine d'Abbadie.
The castle was built between 1864 and 1879 on a cliff by the Atlantic ocean, and was designed by Viollet Le Duc in the Neo Gothic style. It is divided in three parts : the observatory and library, the chapel and the living part.
Nowadays the castle still belongs to the Academy of Science to which it was bequeathed in 1895 on condition of its producing within fifty years a catalogue of half-a-million stars.
The castle was classified as a protected historical monument by France in 1984 and most of the domain now belongs to the Coastal Protection Agency and is managed by the city of Hendaye.
Read more about this topic: Antoine Thomson D'Abbadie
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