LE CHÂTEAU DE VILLANDRY
Jean le Breton, former ambassador in Rome and minister of the king François Ier bought in 1532 the feudal set of Colombiers. He only kept the keep and built the elegant castle surrounded with a Renaissance garden. Colombiers became Villandry in 1639. The marquis of Castellane totally converted the outsides about 1758 to adapt the fashionably and made it build the outbuildings. According to its successive owners the castle so lost of its identity, gardens becoming an .English-style park., it entered disfigured in the twentieth century. When the doctor J. Carvallo and his wife A.Coleman bought the castle of Villandry in 1906 for professional reasons, did they suspect the voracious passion toward which this choice pushed them? Fascinated intellectuals, they gave back to buildings their sober beauties and to gardens the charm, the authenticity and the spirit of time.
The castle welcomes you face on by its remarkable main courtyard, sober and elegant. Well-balanced and of reasonable size, buildings do not crush you and put you comfortable. The inside is richly decorated with furniture and with paintings of Spanish type, in a room the surprising mudejar.s ceiling of the XIIIth century coming from Toledo also reminds the Spanish origins of doctor Carvallo.
The gardens of Renaissance type, restored by the doctor and his wife according to tracks left by low walls buried in the ground and the descriptions of the architect Du Cerceau are for the visitor a real moment of happiness. In Villandry, take your time to look at the perfection: everything is clear, the nature, even if it is domesticated, is magnificent because here the gardeners are artists. Sit down one moment: you notice that this space evolved in small touches, as would have made a painter. A lot of love and passion will have been needed to bring these places back and the miracle goes on since three generations, because it is now the grandson who has the picture in hand and I sometimes discern a new bow, light, but always faithful to the spirit which gave birth to these places. We can admire all in all six hectares on three levels since the belvedere. A brook comes to feed the .large pool. then comes down in waterfalls up to moats by passing buildings. The .vegetable garden. always amazes by the ornamental aspect of its vegetables.
Several events add to the poetry of places because .the nights of thousand fires. allow to walk at night in gardens illuminated by two thousands candles in the course of july, and the festival .music and gardens. of august give the opportunity to listen to pieces of the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries in the evening and in the main courtyard as if. we were princes. If you look for moments of exception, Villandry.s castle can certainly offer them to you.
Thank's to Aude Ancrenaz
