Château de la Motte-Glain, La Chapelle-Glain, France

The Château de la Motte-Glain was built by Pierre de Rohan-Gié in 1495 on the site of an older fortress belonging to the lords of Rougé. Anne of Brittany and Charles VIII stayed there in 1497 and Charles IX and Catherine de' Medici in 1565. It was bought in 1635 by par Michel Le Loup, counsellor to the Parlement of Brittany. The castle was modified by Pierre de Rohan-Gié in the 17th century.

The castle includes a gatehouse composed of a central pavilion flanked by two round towers, some ruined buildings (including a storeroom and a press), a residence decorated with Renaissance windows from the 15th century. The chapel contains a fresco from the 16th century.

The castle is privately owned. Parts of it (gatehouse, storeroom, press, chapel, residence, bay, roof, wall) have been listed since 1926 and protected since 1929 as a monument historique by the French Ministry of Culture. It is open to the public in the summer months.

References:

Wikipedia

User Reviews

BRIGITTE PRZYBYLSKI (14 months ago)
Tres bon accueil de la propriétaire alors que le chateau était fermé. Un grand merci

Jerome Paquot (2 years ago)
Formidable édifice, la visite vaut vraiment la peine, le guide est absolument formidable (en costume d'époque). A voir absolument!

Gisele PAINCHAUD (2 years ago)
Magnifique château , le guide est super et connais bien l histoire du château avec des charmantes anecdotes.

Clotilde OLIVIER (2 years ago)
J'ai laissé un avis sur tripadvisor et je le répète volontiers ici. C'est un très beau château; déjà bien rénové à l'extérieur. Lorsque l'intérieur le sera encore et que le mobilier sera mis en valeur, je suis sûre qu'il sera magnifique. Je donnerais aussi une super note à notre guide; passionné, il nous a passionnés. Volubile, il nous a enchantés. Il est l'âme de ce château! Ses connaissances en histoire et sa connaissance du château nous ont appris beaucoup de choses. Vraiment, une très belle découverte et un très bon moment. Une découverte à ne pas rater! On a aussi apprécié la balade autour du château et le plan d'eau très agréable. Très bon moment.

Jean Paul Hornung (3 years ago)
La propriétaire et le guide très accueillants. Une visite riche en informations intéressantes.

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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 la Motte-Glain

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