Château de Saint-Germain-de-Livet, Saint-Germain-de-Livet, France

The famous chateau at Saint-Germain-de-Livet, now open to the public, was built by the Tournebu (later Tournebu-de-Livet) family between 1561 and 1578. Fine group of buildings are typical in the Pays d'Auge, reuniting a timber-framed manor from the second half of the 15th Century and a 16th century residence in glazed brick and stone, a corner tower, moat and lake. The interior is fully furnished. Today the chateau is a property of the municipality of Lisieux, which stages seasonal exhibitions there.

References:

Normandy Tourism

User Reviews

Matteo Pucci (2 years ago)
Beautiful location in the heart of Normandy. A romantic castle with an amazing garden. I think that the ticket for one hour it's enough because the offer is not good.

Judy Osborne (2 years ago)
Fabulous!

Robin Carlisle (2 years ago)
Pretty little castle. Bit boring for young children

Coucou Ching (2 years ago)
Very cute castle with cherry blossom tree. Please visit here in spring or summer,i really like it! 7.3euro for a person and visit inside of the castle with guide.The guide explained the history of castle to us in English, very nice!

Herve Boutin (2 years ago)
Beautiful place! A must see in Normandy!

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Photo from Flickr, copyright Frans.Sellies

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Kromeriz Castle and Gardens

Kroměříž stands on the site of an earlier ford across the River Morava. The gardens and castle of Kroměříž are an exceptionally complete and well-preserved example of a European Baroque princely residence and its gardens and described as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The first residence on the site was founded by bishop Stanislas Thurzo in 1497. The building was in a Late Gothic style, with a modicum of Renaissance detail. During the Thirty Years' War, the castle was sacked by the Swedish army (1643).

It was not until 1664 that a bishop from the powerful Liechtenstein family charged architect Filiberto Lucchese with renovating the palace in a Baroque style. The chief monument of Lucchese's work in Kroměříž is the Pleasure Garden in front of the castle. Upon Lucchese's death in 1666, Giovanni Pietro Tencalla completed his work on the formal garden and had the palace rebuilt in a style reminiscent of the Turinese school to which he belonged.

After the castle was gutted by a major fire in March 1752, Bishop Hamilton commissioned two leading imperial artists, Franz Anton Maulbertsch and Josef Stern, arrived at the residence in order to decorate the halls of the palace with their works. In addition to their paintings, the palace still houses an art collection, generally considered the second finest in the country, which includes Titian's last mythological painting, The Flaying of Marsyas. The largest part of the collection was acquired by Bishop Karel in Cologne in 1673. The palace also contains an outstanding musical archive and a library of 33,000 volumes.

UNESCO lists the palace and garden among the World Heritage Sites. As the nomination dossier explains, 'the castle is a good but not outstanding example of a type of aristocratic or princely residence that has survived widely in Europe. The Pleasure Garden, by contrast, is a very rare and largely intact example of a Baroque garden'. Apart from the formal parterres there is also a less formal nineteenth-century English garden, which sustained damage during floods in 1997.

Interiors of the palace were extensively used by Miloš Forman as a stand-in for Vienna's Hofburg Imperial Palace during filming of Amadeus (1984), based on the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who actually never visited Kroměříž. The main audience chamber was also used in the film Immortal Beloved (1994), in the piano concerto scene.

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Château de Saint-Germain-de-Livet

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