Details
Founded: 11th centuryCategory: Castles and fortifications in France
Historical period: Birth of Capetian dynasty (France)
Interesting Sites Nearby
User Reviews
The Château de Challeau refers to two châteaux in the neighbouring communes of Dormelles and Villecerf.
The first Château de Challeau was a fortified building built in the 11th century to 12th century. It has a 6m high and 1.3m thick curtain wall which surrounds an area approximately 30m by 24m, with rounded watchtowers at the corners. Unusually, it did not have a central keep, and internal buildings seem to have been limited to temporary shelters. It was modified in the 15th century, during the Hundred Years War. After the French Revolution, it was confiscated and sold to Guillot de Blancheville. It was recovered by the descendents of its original owners in 1937, and restored.
The second Château was built near Fontainebleau in 1540s, for Anne de Pisseleu, duchesse d'Étampes, mistress of Francis I of France, to a design by Pierre Chambiges. Chambiges later created the first Château de la Muette to a similar design.
Anne de Pisseleu's niece, Marguerite Hurault, sold Dormelles and Challeau to Pierre Le Charron, a courtier of King Henry IV, in the 17th century, and it was altered to become the home of Gabrielle d'Estrées (for Voltaire composed his poem La Henriade). Louis XIII later permitted Claude Le Charron to commemorate his term as French ambassador at the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome by renaming the castle as the Château de Saint-Ange. The Château was destroyed in 1803, and a new building was later built in the grounds, also known as the Château de Saint-Ange.
The park around the ruins was given protected status in 1951.
References: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.