Castles and Chateaux of Old BurgundyMansfield, M. F. (Milburg Francisco)
History
Castles and Chateaux of Old Burgundy
Mansfield, M. F. (Milburg Francisco)
Burgundy (France) -- Description and travel; Castles -- France -- Burgundy
Visitors here are welcome. One may stroll the corridors and apartments,
the vast halls and the courtyard as fancy wills, except that one is
always discreetly ciceroned by a guardian who may be a man, a woman, or
even a small child. There is none of the espionage system about the
surveillance, however, and one can but feel welcome. Blazons in stone
and wood and tapestries are everywhere. They are the best, or the worst,
of their kind; one really doesn't stop to think which; the effect is
undeniably what one would wish, and surely no carping critic has any
right to exercise his functions here. There is not the least cause to
complain if the furnishings are of non-contemporary periods like the
exterior adornments, because the certain stamp of sincerity and
genuineness over all defies undue criticism.
The Chateau de Chastellux dates, primarily, from the thirteenth century,
with many fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth century restorations or
additions which are readily enough to be recognized. From its inception,
the chateau has belonged to the family of Beauvoir-de-Chastellux, the
cadet branch of Anseric-de-Montréal.
Practically triangular in form, as best served its original functions of
a defensive habitation, this most theatrical of all Burgundian chateaux
is flanked by four great attached towers. The Tour de l'Horloge is a
massive rectangular pile of the fifteenth century; the Tour d'Amboise is
a round tower dating from 1592; the Tour de l'Hermitage and the Tour des
Archives, each of them, also round, are of the sixteenth century. In the
disposition and massiveness of these towers alone the Chateau de
Chastellux is unique. Another isolated tower, even more stupendous in
its proportions, is known as the Tour Saint Jean, and is a donjon of
the ideally acceptable variety, dating from some period anterior to the
chateau proper.
Moat-surrounded, the chateau is only to be entered by crossing an
ornamental waterway. One arrives at the actual entrance by the usual
all-eyed roadway ending at the _perron_ of the chateau where a simple
bell-pull silently announces the ways and means of gaining entrance. The
domestic appears at once and without questioning your right proceeds to
do the honours as if it were for yourself alone that the place were kept
open.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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