Details
Founded: 1452Category: Castles and fortifications in France
Historical period: Valois Dynasty and Hundred Year's War (France)
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Château de la Motte d'Usseau was built in 1452 by Guillaume de Bec, on the border between Touraine and Poitou, on a very ancient fortified site. The remains of a motte (earthen mound) adjoining the château are still clearly visible today—this is the current “high court” where an earlier château stood in the 12th century.
The château consists of a rectangular main building and a small wing set at a right angle. It is flanked by a large circular tower at the southwest corner, and on the east façade, by a polygonal stair tower and a square turret. This 15th-century structure features large mullioned windows and simple cross-barred openings. At the top of the circular tower is a military-style construction: a parapet with machicolations pierced with gunloops.
This crenellated tower, which served as a keep, was remodeled in the 18th century. It contains a beautiful oak staircase. A stunning hemispherical vault is topped by a room featuring a 15th-century fireplace. In the château’s main body, a winding staircase with a central newel provides access to the upper floors and the watch room.
The château is reached via a cherry tree-lined path that leads to a small park of centuries-old lime trees.
The château is home to a beautiful educational garden inspired by the medieval period. It showcases, from both historical and ethnobotanical perspectives, a wide variety of edible plants from the Middle Ages, along with a few botanical curiosities.
The garden was gradually created between 2001 and 2006. It serves as a setting that enhances the value of the medieval château. Its layout reflects the aesthetics and practicality of late medieval gardens, with geometric patterns. It features areas known as The Orchards, The Berry Garden, The Little Wood, various flowerbeds and borders, and a walled garden (Hortus Conclusus) that primarily contains perennial species from the medieval era: fresh herbs, aromatic and culinary herbs, medicinal herbs, and some now-forgotten small fruits.
Toxic plants once used in magic and witchcraft are kept separate from these gardens, which are centered around a fountain also inspired by the medieval period.
Another organized area, called the Garden of Light, features a collection of annual plants that were used not only for food but also for crafts such as textile making and dyeing.
The Pilgrimage Church of Wies (Wieskirche) is an oval rococo church, designed in the late 1740s by Dominikus Zimmermann. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the municipality of Steingaden.
The sanctuary of Wies is a pilgrimage church extraordinarily well-preserved in the beautiful setting of an Alpine valley, and is a perfect masterpiece of Rococo art and creative genius, as well as an exceptional testimony to a civilization that has disappeared.
The hamlet of Wies, in 1738, is said to have been the setting of a miracle in which tears were seen on a simple wooden figure of Christ mounted on a column that was no longer venerated by the Premonstratensian monks of the Abbey. A wooden chapel constructed in the fields housed the miraculous statue for some time. However, pilgrims from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and even Italy became so numerous that the Abbot of the Premonstratensians of Steingaden decided to construct a splendid sanctuary.