Normandy

Normandy

Manoir de Coupesarte

Few residences embody half-timbered Norman architecture as well as the manoir de Coupesarte, in the heart of the pays d'Auge. Its L-shaped buildings, bristling with corbeled corner turrets, are reflected in the water-filled moat. Once a farmhouse, the manor has become a precious testament to the…

Normandy

Château de Médavy

Built on the ruins of a medieval keep, then enlarged in the 18th century by Thiroux de Montregard, Médavy was home for three centuries to the Rouxel de Médavy family, who gave France two marshals. For some twenty years, Jean-Louis Charon and his wife have been restoring this château in the Orne, in…

Normandy

Château des Feugerets

Three red ferns on a coat of arms: the Feugerets family took its name from a fern that still grows on its land, and scattered the plant all over its château. A castle in the Perche, in southern Normandy, built in the late Middle Ages, reworked in the Renaissance and again under Louis XIII, made a…

Normandy

Château de Pont Saint-Pierre

Five centuries standing, then twenty-five years of neglect nearly finished off Logempré, a small moated château built around 1490 of white Seine stone and flint, on a site long fought over by the Normans and the English. Stripped of its interiors and left without upkeep, it saw its roof frames…

Normandy

Château de Carneville

Behind a symmetrical facade that seems to give itself away at a glance, Carneville hides six levels, mezzanines, secret passages and a network of flues designed in the 18th century to heat the whole house. It was built around 1740-1755 at the tip of the Cotentin peninsula in Normandy for…

Normandy

Château de Vendeuvre

Nine generations have handed Vendeuvre down from father to son since Alexandre de Vendeuvre had it built in the 18th century by Jacques-François Blondel, one of the most celebrated architects of his day. A country house in the Normandy countryside, this château in the Calvados has kept its suite of…

Normandy

Château de Fontaine-Henry

Renaissance facades and huge roofs, among the tallest in France, fool the eye: Fontaine-Henry began as a fortified manor built around 1200 near Caen, with a Gothic chapel and a guardroom. The Harcourt family transformed it from Louis XII to Francis I, with the architect Blaise Le Prestre, and…

Normandy

Château du Blanc-Buisson

With its I-shaped layout and reinforced square keep, the château du Blanc-Buisson has kept the look of a medieval fortified house, in the southern part of the Eure department, in Normandy. Built in the late 13th century, it survived the Hundred Years' War before being remodeled several times.