Genillé, Centre-Val de Loire 37460

In the valley of the Indrois, with a 3-hectare park and a swimming pool, a 15th century fortified house has been carefully restored. Away from the hamlet, hidden behind trees, the house and its outbuildings form a homogeneous whole. On the outskirts, the park forms a partly wooded area. All around, there is the countryside. Organised around a courtyard, the castle was completely restored in the 1980s. The façade of the main house is dominated in its centre by a square tower occupied by a spiral staircase. All exterior walls are exposed stone. Large windows, single and double, are lined with mullions, also in stone. Their surrounds and supports are made of stone and granite. All the frames have been redone in oak with leaded diamond glass, sometimes coloured green or yellow. Inside, the floors of all the rooms are paved with old terracotta tiles. All the walls are rendered and the ceilings are French, with exposed beams. Six monumental stone fireplaces with powerful jambs bear witness to the antiquity of the place. The building is flanked on one side by a small house and on the other, set at right angles, by a lower wing of outbuildings. A barn, also set at right angles, closes the end of the courtyard. Pig pigs and the perimeter wall complete the fence. Thus sheltered and organized around a well, the whole is accessible from a large gate. The rear façade of the house is flanked at each end by square towers. Powerful buttresses frame the central door. All the buildings have in common the exposed stone of their facades and the flat tiles of their roofs.