Why, for whom, how and for what are the Legion of Honour and the National Order of Merit? This unique exhibition answers these questions and traces two centuries of history of the national orders in the heart of Normandy. Conceived and created by the Society of members of the Legion of Honour of l'Orne with the Centre des monuments nationaux, in partnership with the Département de l'Orne and the National Association of members of the Ordre national du mérite de l'Orne, It tells the varied and living journeys of 28 figures, men and women, illustrious or less known, who were all born or lived in the Orne. It is at the castle of Carrouges, national monument of the Orne, that this pantheon naturally finds its place. Owned by the same family for 600 years, the castle counts among its illustrious owners the general Alexis Le Veneur whose name is engraved on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Former Regime officer close to the philosophers of the Enlightenment, then revolutionary general serving under Lafayette, imprisoned because noble under the Terror, favorable to the abolition of privileges, first mayor of Carrouges in 1789, First President of the Orne General Council in 1800, he was appointed a Knight of the Legion of Honor in 1810, only eight years after the creation of this national order by the first consul of the Republic Napoleon Bonaparte. The account of the lives of these knights is accompanied by objects, insignia, testimonies and works of art from exceptional loans from private and public collections and the Museum of the Legion of Honour and the orders of chivalry in Paris.

Address
3 route du château, 61320 Carrouges, Orne, Normandie, France