Twelve Châteaux Within an Hour of Mialet: A Cultured Day Out in North Dordogne
Jump to a château
Château de Montbrun: One for the Photographers
Château de Jumilhac: Gold, Gardens and Candlelit Summer Evenings
Château de Brie: A Family Home You Are Invited Into
Château de Châlus-Chabrol: Where Richard the Lionheart Met His End
Château de Puyguilhem: The Loire Château That Ended Up in the Périgord
Château de Rochechouart: A Medieval Castle Full of Contemporary Art
Château de Lastours: A Ruin, and the Best Medieval Day of the Summer
Château de Bonneval: A Thousand Years, One Family
Château de Bourdeilles: Two Châteaux for the Price of One
Château de Fayolle: Watch a Château Being Rescued
Château de La Rochefoucauld: The Pearl of the Charente
Château de Hautefort: Save the Best for Last
One More, and Nothing Like the Others: Château de la Mercerie
Châteaux en Fête: The Three Weeks When Even the Private Ones Open
Mialet sits in a part of France that is unusually well supplied with castles, and most people have no idea until they get here. Within an hour of the door of Beaux Souvenirs there are twelve châteaux worth a day of anyone’s time, and not one of them will have you queueing behind a coach party.
If you are picturing a château holiday in France, you are probably picturing the Loire, and fairly enough. We are not going to pretend these are Chambord and Chenonceau, because they are not. But the Loire is where everybody else has gone, and there is a particular weariness that sets in there around the fourth one, when the grand houses start blurring into a single grand house and you find you have stopped looking. You get châteaued out. That does not happen here, for two reasons. The crowds are a fraction of the size, and the twelve below have almost nothing in common with one another.
We should be straight about the first of those. Hautefort is properly busy in July and August, and one or two of the others fill up on event days. But the coach tours that come to the Dordogne go south, to Sarlat and the villages strung along the river, and they do not come up here. The Périgord Vert is the quiet end of a busy department, and a good deal more laid back with it.
That word is doing real work, so here is what it means in practice. Nobody moves you along. There are no timed entry slots and no ropes marking out a route. At several of these, the person showing you the rooms is the person who lives in them, and if you ask a question you will get an answer and probably a story with it. You can turn up, look at something for as long as you feel like looking at it, and then go and have lunch.
The contrasts are the point. One is a ruin where volunteers pitch a medieval camp and let you loose with a crossbow. One is stuffed with contemporary art. One is a family home where the owners show you round themselves. One is a twentieth-century folly that was never finished. One has belonged to the same family for a thousand years. One you cannot go inside at all and is worth the drive anyway. That is why there are twelve of them here and not three.
There is a reason for the concentration. This was border country for centuries, between the Limousin and the Périgord and between the French crown and the English one, and borders meant fortresses. Once the fighting stopped, the fortresses became comfortable houses built on top of fortresses. Mialet has its own small share of it: Château de Lambertie, burned by the English in 1339, still stands in the far north of the commune, privately owned and closed to visitors.
They are in order of distance from the gîte, not ranked, because the drive matters more than any opinion of ours about which is finest. The closest is a quarter of an hour away, the furthest about an hour. And nobody does twelve. Most of our guests manage two or three in a week and give the rest of the time to markets, villages, long lunches and the pool, so treat this as a menu and not a list to get through.
Château de Montbrun: One for the Photographers
Distance: about 15 minutes, at Dournazac in the Haute-Vienne
How long to allow: half an hour, or an hour with a drink
Don’t miss: the reflection in the lake, best early with mist on the water
Watch out for: you cannot go in. Private house, and access changes with each owner
In all our years here we have never once been inside. Montbrun is on this list entirely because of where it stands.
If you have ever seen a postcard of the Limousin, you have probably already seen it. The castle stands with its feet in a lake that does the work of a moat and hands the whole building back as a reflection: four squat round towers with jagged tops, a tall square keep, almost nothing modern in the frame. The keep went up in 1179, the place was burned and ruined in 1385, and the heavy round towers came with the fifteenth-century rebuild by Pierre de Montbrun, Bishop of Limoges.
So it is a stop, not a day out. With a camera and a good eye, it is fifteen minutes very well spent. Without one, it is a pleasant pause on the way somewhere else, improved considerably by the tavern across the road.
One correction, since you may run into it. Various sites claim Richard the Lionheart died at Montbrun. He did not. He died at Châlus-Chabrol, further down this list.
Château de Jumilhac: Gold, Gardens and Candlelit Summer Evenings
Distance: about 22 minutes
How long to allow: two hours, or a whole evening in high summer
Don’t miss: the roofline, the Spinner’s room, and the view from the Chapeau du Marquis
Handy: there is a restaurant right outside the gate, and a tea room inside
Watch out for: the candlelit Tuesday evenings need booking. Take a cardigan; the stone holds the cold
Current times: chateaudejumilhac.com
Guests come back and talk about Jumilhac, and it is usually the roof they mention first. Antoine Chapelle, who became the first Count of Jumilhac in 1597, had the roofline dressed in lead and ironwork figures, allegorical shapes crowded along the ridges in a way you will not find anywhere else in France. It has been called the most romantic roof in the country, and that is not marketing; it is simply the most accurate description available.
Inside there is a story that stays with people. The Chambre de la Fileuse, the Spinner’s room, is where a wife of the house was confined for thirty years. She spun, and she passed letters to a man outside by hiding them in her sewing bobbins. The frescoes she left on the walls are still there. Whatever the strict truth of it, standing in that room does something a guidebook cannot. Beyond it are the great seventeenth-century rooms, a carved Louis XIII fireplace, hunting scenes by Oudry, and a climb to the old watchtower for a view down into the gorges of the Isle. The terraced gardens behind follow the principles of Le Nôtre and hold a rose garden, a plant maze and a small planetarium.
The reason to plan around Jumilhac, instead of simply dropping in, is the evening visit. From June to September it opens on Tuesday nights, lit by candles and torches, with music and costume, and Thursdays too in July and August. In high summer you can eat on the terraces first and go in afterwards.
Château de Brie: A Family Home You Are Invited Into
Distance: about 25 minutes, at Champagnac-la-Rivière
How long to allow: an hour and a half
Don’t miss: the granite staircase vaulting, and the medieval barn in the park
Watch out for: by appointment and on set open days only. Ring or email first
Current dates: chateaudebrie.fr
Brie is the closest thing in this guide to being asked round for the afternoon. Built in 1484 by Jehan de Brie, listed, flamboyant Gothic tipping into early Renaissance, and somebody’s house. A family lives in it all year round and shows you round themselves.
That changes the character of a visit completely, because the rooms are furnished for the simple reason that they are used. You go up a Limousin granite staircase set inside the square keep, under vaulting that opens overhead like a palm, then through the medieval dining room, the Chambre Mirabeau, named for the family who once owned the place, the Empire room and the Poets’ room, finishing in a Napoleon III salon smothered in stucco that comes as a complete surprise. In the park, among trees more than two hundred years old, stands a thirteenth-century barn, listed in its own right and restored with modern lighting rather than any pretence at being older than it is.
Brie sits inside the Périgord-Limousin Regional Nature Park, the same park as Mialet, so the drive is short and pretty. Remember that you are in somebody’s house.
Château de Châlus-Chabrol: Where Richard the Lionheart Met His End
Distance: about 25 minutes, at Châlus in the Haute-Vienne
How long to allow: forty-five minutes
Don’t miss: the guard room fireplace, the chapel, and the view from the keep
Watch out for: this is a partly ruined castle under restoration, not a furnished showpiece
Current times: chateau-chaluschabrol.e-monsite.com
This is the one with the story, and for British visitors in particular it is a strange thing to stand in. In March 1199 Richard the Lionheart was besieging Châlus-Chabrol when a crossbow bolt from the walls caught him in the shoulder. The wound turned bad. He died on 6 April at the foot of the great fireplace in the guard room, with his mother Eleanor of Aquitaine at his side, having ridden from Fontevraud to reach him. His entrails were buried in the castle chapel and are there still.
It is worth knowing why he was here at all, because it explains half the buildings in this guide. Châlus-Chabrol was the first in a chain of fifteen castles defending Limoges, and it controlled the road south into the Périgord. The Viscounts of Limoges used it to hold out against the Plantagenets, and it passed in time through the Sully, Albret, Borgia and Bourbon families. It was besieged four times, the last in 1406 when the English tried again.
What remains is the circular twelfth-century keep, the shell of the chapel and the main building. There is a good introductory film in French or English, a small museum about the feuillardiers, the chestnut woodcutters who worked this landscape, a medieval garden, and a view from the top of the keep that goes a long way. Shop and bar with a terrace.
Château de Puyguilhem: The Loire Château That Ended Up in the Périgord
Distance: about 30 minutes, at Villars on the Brantôme road
How long to allow: an hour and a half, or a full day with the cave
Don’t miss: the Hercules fireplace, and the ship’s hull roof frame in the top gallery
Watch out for: it closes over the middle of the day, every day, and last admission is well before closing
Current times: chateau-puyguilhem.fr
Puyguilhem comes as a surprise, partly because of how it appears. You follow a small road through woodland, the trees open out onto meadow, and there it is: pale stone, mullioned windows, towers and turrets of several different shapes, looking far more like the Loire than the Périgord.
That is not an accident. It was built between 1514 and 1535 for Mondot de la Marthonie, first president of the Parliament of Paris and a man close to Louise of Savoy, the mother of François I. He knew the Loire châteaux from court, and he wanted one, and the Florentine detail is all over the stonework once you look for it: salamanders, faces of royalty, musicians. Abandoned and stripped in the nineteenth century, it was bought by the state in 1939 and restored over more than twenty years. Two things inside stop people: the fireplace in the great hall, carved with the twelve labours of Hercules, and the top-floor gallery, where the oak roof frame is built like the hull of an upturned ship.
Villars gives you more than the château if you want a full day. The Grotte de Villars, a few minutes away, holds around thirty original prehistoric paintings made roughly nineteen thousand years ago in black manganese oxide. A thin film of calcite formed over some of them afterwards and turned the lines blue, which is where the little blue horse the cave is known for gets its name. There is also a man standing in front of a bison, one of very few human figures anywhere in Palaeolithic cave art. Cave bears once hibernated there and left claw marks on the walls. It is thirteen degrees down there all year, so you may needtake a jacket. The ruins of Boschaud Abbey are a short drive away.
Château de Rochechouart: A Medieval Castle Full of Contemporary Art
Distance: 37 minutes, 36 km
How long to allow: two hours, plus the meteorite walk in the town
Don’t miss: the stag hunt fresco, the Hercules grisaille, and the twisted columns of the courtyard gallery
Watch out for: closed Mondays and Tuesdays, and through the depths of winter
Current times: musee-rochechouart.com
By this point you may feel you have seen as many furnished rooms and painted ceilings as one holiday requires. Rochechouart is the antidote, and it is where we send guests who want a château that does something else entirely.
Start with the ground it stands on, because it is the oddest fact in this guide. Roughly 210 million years ago a meteorite about a kilometre and a half across hit this spot at something in the order of seventy two thousand kilometres an hour, leaving a crater among the oldest known anywhere on Earth. The rock the impact created, impactite, was later quarried and built into the walls, so the building is made partly out of the consequences of a meteor strike. The castle itself sits on a spur above the Graine and Vayres valleys: fortified entrance and keep from the thirteenth century, most of the rest from the fifteenth, and an inner courtyard with an arcaded Renaissance gallery on twisted columns.
It was plundered during the Revolution and the furniture went with it, which is exactly why what happened next was possible. Since 1985, the château has held the Musée départemental d’art contemporain de la Haute-Vienne, more than thirteen hundred works gathered around landscape, history and the imagination, with artists commissioned to make work for these particular rooms. The presiding figure is Raoul Hausmann, one of the founders of Berlin Dada, who took refuge in the Limousin during the war and never left. The Revolution did spare two rooms: one carries an early sixteenth-century mural of a stag hunt below the ramparts, the other the Labours of Hercules in grisaille, which will ring a bell if you have already stood in front of the fireplace at Puyguilhem.
Château de Lastours: A Ruin, and the Best Medieval Day of the Summer
Distance: about 40 minutes, at Rilhac-Lastours
How long to allow: an afternoon, or an evening for the torchlit visits
Don’t miss: the medieval camp, with archery, axe throwing and crossbow shooting
Watch out for: the events run on set dates, not continuously. Check before you drive over
Current dates: rilhac-lastours.fr
A bare ruin does not usually make much of a day out, which is why one or two of the castles round here are not in this guide at all. Lastours is the exception, and the reason is the people who look after it.
The site carries something like ten thousand years of occupation. Between roughly 950 and 1150 there were three castle mounds here, each carrying a timber tower, which tells you what the Lastours family counted for in the eleventh century. The stone fortress that replaced them grew into a Romanesque keep with six corner towers joined by high curtain walls, deep ditches, and a wide bailey by the sixteenth century. It was abandoned at the end of the eighteenth century, robbed of its stone, and by 1971 had vanished under scrub and its own rubble. A small group found it that year and decided to save it. The association that grew out of that, the Amis de Lastours, has since put more than four hundred volunteers through the site, and the work is still going on.
What makes it worth an afternoon is what they do with the place. Several times a year the ruins open for a visit built around mysteries and riddles, with a medieval camp pitched in the bailey and weapons laid out to try. On summer evenings there are torchlit visits led by characters in costume, and at the Sainte-Marguerite village festival they set the ruins alight after dark. Least polished visit in this guide, one of the most memorable, and every euro goes back into the walls.
Château de Bonneval: A Thousand Years, One Family
Distance: 43 minutes, 41 km, at Coussac-Bonneval
How long to allow: an hour and a half
Don’t miss: the double drawbridge, the collonaded gallery, and the Pasha of Three Tails’ room
Watch out for: no photographs inside
Current dates: chateaudebonneval.com
La Rochefoucauld, a little further down this list, makes the grandest claim about family continuity of anywhere near us. Bonneval makes a quieter version of the same claim, and to our minds gives the better visit, because it is smaller and warmer, and you may well be shown round by the Marquis himself.
A castle stood on this hill by 930, on the site of a Gallo-Roman villa. What you see now was largely rebuilt in the fourteenth century and altered in the eighteenth, and the Bonneval family has held it without a break for something close to a thousand years and around eleven generations. During the Hundred Years’ War it was taken by Du Guesclin and handed back in exchange for allegiance to France. It is square, with heavy round towers at the corners and a moat, standing above the red tiled roofs of the village. Look for the family arms and motto cut into the stone above the drawbridge, and the stone lions on the west terrace.
Ten rooms and two galleries are open, furnished with Louis XIII and Louis XVI pieces and hung with Aubusson and Fontainebleau tapestries. The room people tend to remember belonged to Claude Alexandre de Bonneval, an eighteenth-century ancestor who left the French army, entered Ottoman service and ended his life as a pasha, known as the Pasha of Three Tails. Read his story before you go, because it is considerably stranger than anything a guidebook will tell you.
Château de Bourdeilles: Two Châteaux for the Price of One
Distance: about 47 minutes, ten minutes beyond Brantôme
How long to allow: two hours for the château, another half hour for the village
Don’t miss: the painted ceilings in the Golden Salon, and Charles V’s gilded bed
Watch out for: the hours move about a good deal by season. Park behind the church, a hundred metres from the gate
Current times: chateau-bourdeilles.fr
Bourdeilles is our favourite of the twelve. It is genuinely unique in this part of France: two separate châteaux standing on the same ground inside one set of walls, one built for war and one built for show, and a single ticket gets you both.
There has been a stronghold on this rock above the Dronne since at least 1183, when monks took refuge here with the relics of Saint Sicaire. What stands today begins with a thirteenth-century fortress, and the keep is what you see first: octagonal, over thirty metres tall, walls close to two and a half metres thick. Climb it. The view along the river valley and over the village roofs is among the best in the Périgord Vert, and the stair is perfectly manageable if you take it slowly.
The Renaissance palace standing beside it is the reason people stay far longer than they intended. It was designed by Jacquette de Montbron, Baroness of Bourdeilles, who is widely considered the first woman architect in France. Her brother-in-law was the writer Brantôme, and in the funeral oration he wrote for her, he was explicit that the palace was all her own invention and design. The rooms have the light and the proportions of an Italian palazzo, which is not remotely what you expect having just come out of the fortress next door.
The story behind it is better than the one usually told. Jacquette was summoned to court in 1587 as lady in waiting to Catherine de Medici and became one of the queen’s favourites, partly because she spoke Italian. She came home to Bourdeilles in 1588. Catherine died that January, leaving her a bequest of four thousand crowns, and that is the money this palace was built with. Jacquette set aside a room for the queen, who never came and never could have, and then the money ran out. The east wing was never built. What you walk through is an unfinished tribute paid for by the woman it was meant to honour.
The painted ceilings are the thing. They are what people photograph, and what guests describe to us afterwards, and the Golden Salon has the finest of them. Do not rush that room. Look up, stand still, and give it a few minutes.
The rest of the interior is remarkable and oddly little publicised: more than seven hundred pieces of furniture spanning the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries, one of the richest collections in the whole of Nouvelle-Aquitaine. There is an armoury. And there is the gilded Spanish bed of the Emperor Charles V, an object so elaborate that it takes a moment to work out quite what you are looking at.
The village is part of the pleasure and should not be rushed past: a handful of stone houses, a couple of restaurants, a medieval garden, the river below, and the distinct impression that nothing here is in any hurry. During the school holidays there are dramatised evening tours after dark, led by characters in costume, which are a completely different experience from a daytime visit.
If you want to build a full day around it, Bourdeilles sits ten minutes from Brantôme, and we have written that combination up in detail, restaurants included, in our Brantôme guide.
A word about the last three. They are all within a couple of minutes of each other, all about an hour, so there is no meaningful distance between them. We have put them in the order we would send you.
Château de Fayolle: Watch a Château Being Rescued
Distance: about an hour, 62 km, at Tocane-Saint-Apre
How long to allow: an hour and a half, or an evening for a concert or the open-air cinema
Don’t miss: the period theatre, the consecrated chapel, and the urbex style tour of the unrestored parts
Watch out for: the programme changes through the season, so check what is running
Current dates: chateau-de-fayolle.com
Fayolle is the newest thing in this guide by a very wide margin, and along with Bourdeilles it is our favourite. We went last year and thought it was excellent, and we have been sending guests ever since.
It had been in private hands and effectively shut for years. New owners took it on in 2024 and opened it to the public for the first time, and they have done something unusual. Rather than wait until the restoration is finished and then present a polished house, they are showing it exactly as it is, mid-project, and putting the ticket money straight into the work.
The building is two parallel wings, one of 1766 and one of 1893, joined by walls with pavilions at either end, listed since 1969 and reworked in the late nineteenth century under the architect Léo Drouyn. Inside there are reception rooms that once held balls, fine woodwork, a period theatre and a consecrated chapel. Outside there are fifty-five hectares of park, with a dovecote and the old farm buildings still standing.
What lifts it above a building site with a ticket desk is the way they run the visits. There is a straight historical tour, but there is also one led by an actor in character, one in the manner of an urbex explorer through the unrestored parts, and a version they simply call secret. Through the summer there are immersive shows, concert evenings with the façades lit up, and open-air cinema in the park. Half of what you look at is still a building site, and plenty of people find that more interesting than a house somebody finished years ago.
Château de La Rochefoucauld: The Pearl of the Charente
Distance: about an hour, 59 km, and half an hour on from Piégut-Pluviers
How long to allow: two hours
Don’t miss: the hundred and eight-step Renaissance staircase, and the libraries
Watch out for: closed on Tuesdays, and shut for several weeks in midwinter
Current times: chateau-la-rochefoucauld.com
This one is a Wednesday, and the pairing is close to perfect. Piégut-Pluviers has one of the best markets in the region, 26 kilometres from the gîte, and when you have finished there it is another half hour west into the Charente to a château most Dordogne visitors never think to cross the departmental border for. It is known as the Pearl of the Charente, and it deserves the title.
La Rochefoucauld has been owned by the same family for over a thousand years. Only four other families in France can claim that kind of continuity, the Capetians among them, and the family arrived here in the early eleventh century, building a stronghold on a rock above the Tardoire. The square keep dates from around 1030 and is one of the earliest of its type anywhere.
What was built around it in the 1520s is the reason to come. Massive medieval towers frame a Renaissance courtyard whose stacked galleries were modelled directly on the Villa Farnese in Italy, and the façade above the river is the sort of thing you photograph and then simply look at. Two features inside carry the visit: the great Renaissance staircase, a hundred and eight steps of sixteenth-century stone cutting, and the libraries, which hold something in the region of twenty thousand volumes. Look out too for the kitchens cut down into the rock, and the boudoir of Marguerite de Valois. The family are said to descend from the fairy Mélusine, whose ghost is supposed to walk the walls, which is the kind of detail the guides tell with a completely straight face. We have been several times over the years, and it has never disappointed. Go for the building.
Château de Hautefort: Save the Best for Last
Distance: about an hour, 55 km, in the Périgord Noir
How long to allow: two hours minimum, longer if the gardens tempt you
Don’t miss: the formal gardens, and the rooms you will recognise from Ever After
Watch out for: the busiest of the twelve in July and August. Go early or late in the day
Also: a proper walk round the English park, not a stroll. Dogs in the park but not the château
Current times: chateau-hautefort.com
If you only manage one château while you are with us, make it this one. Hautefort is the finest in the north of the Dordogne. It stands on a rocky spur with the countryside falling away on every side, and it does not look like the rest of the Dordogne at all. There are no defensive walls left to speak of. What you approach instead is a broad, symmetrical, unmistakably grand seventeenth-century house with domed pavilions, more Île-de-France than Périgord.
That was the point. The Marquis de Hautefort, an adviser to Louis XIV, employed the architects Nicolas Rambourg and Jacques Maigret to strip the medieval fortress of everything military and turn it into a classical residence fit for the court he served. Richard the Lionheart had attacked the earlier castle here on his way to Châlus, which quietly ties one end of this guide back to the other, since Châlus-Chabrol is twenty-five minutes from your door.
You may find it familiar before you get through the gate. Around fifteen films have been shot here since 1960, and English-speaking visitors usually place it halfway round: Hautefort is the royal palace in Ever After, the 1998 Cinderella film with Drew Barrymore, standing in as the home of the King, the Queen and Prince Henry. The courtyard is the masked ball. The staircase is the one the Grimm brothers climb at the opening. Before that came Le Capitan in 1960 with Jean Marais, and since then Jacquou le Croquant among others. The château has run an exhibition on all of it under the title Versailles in the Périgord, which tells you exactly how the place sees itself.
In 1968 a fire tore through the building and very nearly ended it. The restoration since has been meticulous, and one of the most effective parts of the visit is a 360-degree reconstruction that puts you inside that night. You also go through the seventeenth-century private apartments, the estate kitchens and the reception rooms, with their period paintings and tapestries.
Then there are the gardens, which are the other half of the day. Three hectares of formal French parterres, all clipped box and geometry, wrap around the château, with burgundy roses among the planting. Beyond them lies thirty hectares of English-style park laid out in the nineteenth century by the Comte de Choulot. The views back towards the village are the best photographs of the trip.
It is the only one of the twelve that has crossed into the Périgord Noir, the busy half of the department, which is why you will meet other people here in high summer. Still a fraction of Chenonceau, and the site is big enough to swallow them.
Hautefort is also the most organised visit of the twelve. Your ticket includes a historical commentary, a tour of the gardens and a visit to the film studio, all free and running through the day. There is a restaurant serving Périgord cooking, and this year it is opening in the evenings in high summer as well.
One More, and Nothing Like the Others: Château de la Mercerie
Distance: about an hour, 70 km, in the Charente
How long to allow: an hour and a half with the park
Don’t miss: the frontage, best seen from a distance, and the azulejos gallery, unique in France
Watch out for: self-guided with QR codes. Guided tours depend on which volunteers are free
Current details: chateaudelamercerie.fr
We have called this a twelve, and it is, but there is one more we cannot leave out. La Mercerie is much the same drive as the last three, over in the Charente, and it sits on its own here because it is nothing like anything else in this guide. A twentieth-century folly, built by two brothers who never finished it. No fortress, no Renaissance rooms, nothing whatever to do with the rest of this list.
They call it the Versailles charentais, and the frontage is why. Two hundred and twenty metres of white stone, classical, symmetrical and startlingly long, rising out of Charente farmland with no earthly business being there. Stand well back to take it in, because there is no close-up angle that holds the whole thing.
In 1924, two brothers, Alphonse and Raymond Réthoré, bought a modest neo-Gothic manor on this spot and then spent the rest of their lives extending it into what you see. It was never finished. After they died, the place stood abandoned for thirty years, and the collections were scattered.
Since 2011, the commune and a volunteer association have been bringing it back. Inside there is a gallery of Portuguese azulejos, the great blue tile panels, which is unique in France, along with a mahogany gallery, an orangery and a series of painted rooms. Outside there are fifty hectares of park planted with rare trees the brothers brought home from their travels. Every ticket goes straight into a restoration that is very much still under way, and the unfinished state is a large part of the interest.
If Fayolle appealed to you, this will too. It is being put back together as you walk round it, and the tickets pay for the work.
Châteaux en Fête: The Three Weeks When Even the Private Ones Open
Châteaux en Fête runs across the Dordogne for three weeks every spring, from the middle of April into the first days of May. More than a hundred châteaux take part, and around seventy of them are shut to the public for the rest of the year. That is the point of it: for three weeks you can walk into private houses, meet the families who live in them, and then not get another chance until the following April.
It falls in the loveliest and quietest weeks of our year, which we have written about separately, and at our quietest season prices. Of the châteaux above, it takes in the Dordogne ones, Jumilhac, Puyguilhem, Bourdeilles, Fayolle and Hautefort. Dates move a little each year, and the programme goes up at dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr
Planning Your Château Visits: What We Tell Our Guests
How Many Can You Actually Fit In?
Two or three in a week, and that is what most of our guests do. Once you have driven there, walked round and eaten somewhere, a château has taken half a day, and a week here has a great deal of competition for those half days. There is the Wednesday market at Piégut-Pluviers, an afternoon in Brantôme, a long lunch on a terrace somewhere, the fashion museum here on site, and a day spent doing absolutely nothing beside the pool, which is the one most people underestimate.
So pick the two or three that suit the week you have got, and leave the rest. A good many of our guests come back, and there is something to be said for still having Hautefort ahead of you.
One Château a Day Is Plenty
It is tempting to pair them up, and occasionally that works, but a château, a decent lunch and a wander round the village it sits in will fill a day comfortably. Two in a day turns a pleasure into a schedule.
A Ready Made Route: Richard the Lionheart
If you would rather shape a week than pick days at random, there is a route waiting for you. The Route Richard Coeur de Lion links the castles caught up in the last campaign of Richard the Lionheart, and five of the twelve above sit on it: Jumilhac and Hautefort, both of which he attacked, Brie and Lastours, and Châlus-Chabrol, where in April 1199 he died of a crossbow wound. Follow it and the week has a story running through it.
The Combinations That Do Work
Montbrun, Brie and Châlus-Chabrol sit in the same corner of the Haute-Vienne and are all shortish visits, so two of the three in one day is comfortable. Puyguilhem is on the Brantôme road, so it slots into a Brantôme and Bourdeilles day. Fayolle is further down the Dronne from Bourdeilles, so those two can be paired, though it makes for a long day. La Rochefoucauld belongs to a Wednesday, after the market at Piégut-Pluviers, and that is the single best pairing in this guide. Rochechouart and Lastours are close together and completely different in character, which makes them a good pairing if you want contrast. Jumilhac, Bonneval and Hautefort each deserve a day to themselves.
Mind the French Lunch Hour
Puyguilhem shuts in the middle of the day, and it is not the only one. Either go early and be out by lunch, or eat first and arrive for the afternoon opening. Turning up at one o’clock is the classic mistake.
Laid Back Cuts Both Ways
The same thing that makes these places pleasant makes them less slick than a big monument. Small private châteaux often do not take cards, so carry some cash. Two of them open by appointment only, so ring first. At La Mercerie, the guided tour depends on which volunteer happens to be free. None of that is a problem if you are expecting it, and all of it is annoying if you are not.
Book the Evenings
The candlelit Tuesdays at Jumilhac need booking, and so do the terrace dinners in high summer. The evening events at Lastours and Fayolle run on set dates, so check what is on.
Use the Cool Box
There is a cool box in the gîte, and every one of these places has somewhere nearby worth eating a picnic. The park at Hautefort is made for it. Fill the box at the bakery on your way out, and you have saved yourself an hour of hunting for a restaurant.
Why There Are No Opening Times Here
Because they move with the season and sometimes with the weather, and nothing is more annoying than driving an hour on the strength of an out-of-date web page. Each château above has its own site, linked in its glance box, and that is always the current word. We also keep printed times and phone numbers at the gîte, and we are happy to ring ahead for you.
Your Base for All of It
Twelve châteaux, spanning the tenth century to the nineteenth, all within an hour of the front door, and a private pool to come back to at the end of the day. That combination is why a good number of our guests return, and why we have never run out of things to send people off to see.
And there are more than twelve. We have left several out, simply because a blog has to stop somewhere. Ask us when you are here, and we will tell you which ones suit the week you have got, and which are worth the drive in the weather you have been given.
Beaux Souvenirs is our adults-only pool gîte in the village of Mialet, in the Périgord Vert. If you would like help building a week around these, we know which suit a hot afternoon, which are best in the morning light, and which are worth timing an evening around.