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:Goryōkaku (五稜郭) (literally, 'five-point fort') is a star fort in the Japanese city of Hakodate on the island of Hokkaido. The fortress was completed in 1866. It was the main fortress of the short-lived Republic of Ezo.
Goryōkaku was designed in 1855 by Takeda Ayasaburō and Jules Brunet. Their plans was based on the work of the French architect Vauban. The fortress was completed in 1866, two years before the collapse of the Tokugawa Shogunate. It is shaped like a five-pointed star. This allowed for greater numbers of gun emplacements on its walls than a traditional Japanese fortress, and reduced the number of blind spots where a cannon could not fire.
The fort was built by the Tokugawa shogunate to protect the Tsugaru Strait against a possible invasion by the Meiji government.
Goryōkaku is famous as the site of the last battle of the Boshin War.