Château Montebello

The Fairmont Le Château Montebello or simply Château Montebello is a hotel and resort complex in Montebello, Quebec, Canada. The setting for the retreat is of forested wildlife sanctuary and 70 lakes on the shore of the Ottawa River, between Ottawa and Montreal.ConstructionIn the late 1920s, Harold M. Saddlemire, a Swiss-American entrepreneur, acquired a site along the Ottawa River, on land that formerly formed part of the Seigneurial system of New France.The hotel is situated on one of the last surviving land grants made by 17th-century French kings to early settlers of what was then La Nouvelle France.François de Laval, the first Bishop of Quebec, purchased the property in 1674 from the French East India Company. The Quebec Seminary inherited it from Laval. In 1801, the land was sold to the family of Joseph Papineau. His son, Louis-Joseph Papineau, built a turreted stone mansion, the Manoir Papineau, in typically French style. This grand house, which was designated a National Historic Site of Canada, functions as a museum which is open in the summer. It is the only structure on the property which doesn't conform to the log cabin motif of the resort.