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Napoleon offers this castle to Talleyrand... to undoubtedly move away it.
In 1803, Talleyrand, this astonishing character who begins his career under Louis XVI as bishop of Autun and it finishes, in 1838, after having held highest employment under all governments which followed one another, receives from Napoleon the order to buy a "beautiful ground" to place guests of mark, the princes of Spain. Its choice is made on Valençay. The result is appalling: a castle of 100 parts sumptuously furnished, 150 ha of park, and 19 000 ha of grounds and wood. Talleyrand gives to the castle princely receptions.

Valençay presents astonishing architectural choices, like the extraordinary house of entry in the shape of keep very archaïsant for the XVIth century end. This house of entry is an enormous construction treated in keep, but in keep of pleasure, with many windows, inoffensive turrets and false machicolation. The acute roof is openwork high attic windows and surmounted monumental chimneys. This architecture is found in the Renaissance castles of the Loire Valley. Thus the party of Chambord shows through in volumes of the keep and the gross tower, in the regular squaring of the frontages, the rich person decoration of the decorative machicolation. The successive recoveries add to the mixture of the kinds and create delicious anachronisms stylistics. One will notice in particular the first notes of the classical style Château de Valençay :pilasters superimposed on the doric capitals (ground floor), ionic (1st stage) and Corinthians (2nd stage). The traditional one is shown even more in the roofs of the grosses towers of angle. The domes are the rule at the XVI 2nd century on the edges of the Loire.