About halfway between Caen, Lisieux and Falaise, the little town of Mézidon-Canon is certainly no the most picturesque place you can find in Normandy. But there stands a lovely castle, in a large wooded park where a quiet river is divided into many canals, reflecting sky, foliage and buildings ( Read more... )

Not far from Grandchamp-le-château, the little village of Saint-Germain-de-Livet is one of the most lovely places in the area.
On one side of the road, you find a church and its cemetery, full of flowers and old mossy graves. On the other side, stands the castle - a little, fairytale-like castle, built along a stream in the middle of the fields.


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In 912, the castle of Soyans is one of the properties given by Louis the Blind - King of Provence and Holy Roman Emperor -  to the church of Valence. The actual buiding was erected in the 12th century, and it fall into the hands of many families. Diane de Poitiers, Henry II's famous favourite, owned the castle but probably never came there ( Read more... )

Third part, and last one ! A long walk across the park, with a jumble of places and seasons.

♣The castle remained almost useless and empty during the Revolution, Empire and Bourbon Restauration. In 1833, to save the place, Louis-Philippe decided to convert the castle into a museum "dedicated to all the glories of France". Paid by the king himself ( Read more... )

General views of the apartments are almost impossible to picture with all the crowd around, so I focused on details... and on a serie of works by Joana Vasconcelos, exhibited in the castle until the last days of September.

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During the reigns of Louis XV and Louis XIV, Versailles underwent many more transformations, but not on the same scale as ( Read more... )

The place is so big, and I have so many pictures of it - various seasons and atmospheres, sunny, cloudy, snowy, crowded, deserted... - that it's quite difficult to organise it all. I'll make several posts... and the first one is already a big one !

♣When Louis XIII bought the estate of Versailles, in 1623, nothing was built on the site of the ( Read more... )

Normandy. Grandchamp-le-Château is a very small village along a river : a little church, a few houses... and this castle.


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Back to Brocéliande. The history of Trécesson is a very ancient one : the place was already the seat of the lords of Ploërmel and Campénéac in the 8th century, and the Trécesson family is documented since the 13th century.
The actual castle was built in the 15th century. Property of the Carné-Trécesson family until 1773, it now belongs to the ( Read more... )

Brocéliande. The Valley of no Return is not far from here. At the entrance to the small village of Tréhorenteuc, stands this 16th century manor, formerly named château du Gurwan.

Property of many noble families during history (the Gaël, the Montfort, the Laval, the Coligny...), it inspired the novel Le Val sans Retour, written by Rachilde and Jean- ( Read more... )

Almost nothing remains of the first fort built in the early 13th century, at the foot of the gallo-roman walls of the city. The actual castle was erected in the second half of the 15th century by the last duke of Britanny, François II, and his daughter - the famous Duchesse Anne, born in Nantes, who married two kings of France and fought all her ( Read more... )