The Château de la Mogère is one of many follies surrounding Montpellier, built by wealthy merchants in the 18th century. In 1706, the grounds of la Mogère were purchased by Fulcran Limouzin. In 1715, architect Jean Giral drew the plan for La Mogère, giving it the appearance it still has today.
Its harmonious façade is topped off by a pediment, standing against a background of pine trees, all in Renaissance-style.
The grounds and interior, currently owned by the Viscount Gaston de Saporta, are open for visits. The interior has been kept intact since the 18th century, displaying antique furniture and family portraits from the last three centuries. Amongst the painters represented here are Jean Jouvenet, Hyacinthe Rigaud and Jacques-Louis David.
The garden is a mixture of English garden and formal garden style and houses a large fountain built up out of thousands of little seashells and carrying a number of cherubs.
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.