The magnificient FRENCH CHATEAU of the COUNTESS Barbara de Nicolaÿ. Exclusive TOUR.

Welcome to the Château du Lude. We are here in the Anjou Kingdom. The Château du Lude belongs to the Loire Valley castles. We are also in the Loire Valley. Le Lude has a very, very old story. It's still a very living house because there is still a family living here. I stay here with my husband and our four children. But it's a real historic listed house and one of the most important of the Loire Valley. What's very interesting about this house is that you can find on the same building the different styles of the French architecture and decoration. Actually, the story starts in the Middle Ages. At that time, as you cannot see, it was a stronghold that defended the Anjou Kingdom against the enemies and amongst them the English, I'm afraid. Because we are here in the area where was played the Hundred Years' War. Le Lude was a very important stronghold with 2,000 soldiers. It was occupied by the English in the 15th century. A little bit later, in 1427, the famous Gilles de Rais, one of the companions of Joan of Arc, came along to join Joan of Arc in Orléans. He put the English out of Le Lude and there was a big battle on this château. That means that we are more or less at the end of the Hundred Years' War. After that time, the château was bought by the Chamberlain of Louis XI, one of the most important French kings. This man called Jean de Dayon transformed the stronghold into a beautiful country house. Let us say a country palace because the decoration is so raffinated. He did it during 300 years with his descendants. As you can see on this absolutely marvellous façade, this is for instance the Italian Renaissance. It is still complete on a French château. All the details are so different. This was built and decorated between 1510 and 1525. That is the time of François I, one of the greatest kings in France. This is the Italian Renaissance façade. If we make a tour of this château, we will find a lot of different styles. We started with the Middle Ages, then the Italian Renaissance. We will see the French Renaissance in the courtyard, very elegant. We will find later the neoclassical style with a new wing that was added between two towers at the end of the 18th century. It is maybe the time to bring you inside and to show you some rooms where some are open to the public, some we are still using today. That is what I want to show you. Please come in and follow me. This is very interesting about this house. We will find the same story about the styles as outside. We will cross two Renaissance wings with beautiful stone decoration and beautiful ceilings. This is still original. Some places were restored in the 19th century. Some pieces of the decoration are neo-Gothic, but everything fits perfectly well together. The most important architects worked here during the whole 19th century to restore the château for the family. Actually, the house is in our family, the family of Nicolai, since 1750. We are here in the main entrance. This beautiful staircase, a beautiful Renaissance staircase that leads to three floors and brings you to the library. This is the old library with a collection of books. The oldest are from the 16th century. There are more or less 4,000 books in the library. I didn't read all of them yet. Let's go to the ballroom. Maybe I will add some light, even if we have the sun shining. This is a typical French Renaissance style. As you can see, for instance, on the chimney, the mantelpiece is really neo-Gothic with the crest of the Dayan family, this powerful family very close to the French kings. It's here that we still keep the oldest furniture of the house. Sometimes, we give big parties. It's a huge room. From here, we will arrive in the modern wing of the château that was added just before the French Revolution. It gives the feeling that we are arriving in another house. It's very special. As they did in the 18th century, there are three drawing rooms, one after the other. They could organize big parties. It was a very open house. What is very special about this house is that we kept everything in the house for centuries. For instance, on the walls, you can see the portraits of the family, the ancestors of my husband. They are still hanging on the walls. This is the main drawing room with a typical Louis XVI style for the furniture. It leads to the green drawing room that we still use today with the family. That brings us to the bedroom. This is not my bedroom. It's a typical guest room with a sort of baldaquin, as we say, in the Polish way. It's from the Louis XVI style. That's really how the people lived in this house in the 18th and 19th century. There was a little bathroom, of course, without taps. This kind of bathroom was used until the last war. Tap water was added only after the last war. We can have just a glimpse of the most beautiful little room of the chateau, which is very unusual in a French chateau. This is a studiolo. A studiolo is a sort of small cabinet covered by paintings. One sees it very often in Italian palaces, but very seldom in a French chateau. I know only two other chateaus in France that kept such a cabinet. This kind of studiolo was used by the owner of the house to stay quiet, alone, without all his court around him. The walls are absolutely magnificent with paintings of the 16th century. Some of them are on the theme of the Bible and also a book of Petrarchus. The ceiling is made by the school of Raphael. You can find exactly the same paintings in Rome in the Vatican Museum. Here is the youngest child of the house, our dog Pilar, coming from Cornwall. I think it's time to bring you on the floor and to show you your bedroom. Let's go upstairs. We make first a stop at the hunting room, which, curiously, is on the first floor of the house. I don't know why, but we just restored it in 2020. We found in the house all the records of the hunting time in this house. Our great-grandfather had a hunt for the wild boar and the roe deer. The hunt played a big role in the winter period. From October until March, April, the hunt went out in the woods maybe twice a week. There were 20 dogs here and a lot of horses, of course. All the story is shown in the different paintings you can see on the walls. This hunt room brings you to your bedroom. We are here on the second floor. It's a series of little bedrooms, very comfortable, let's say 19th century, but everything is still there. As you can see, the bed is ready, the clothes are there. The daily life was very crowded at that time. We know that the family always hosted a lot of friends and family, so they needed bedrooms everywhere for the families, for the children. You can maybe feel it in these bedrooms. It's a little bit noisy today, as you can hear, but that means that the works are still going on because we are restoring several rooms on the different floors that will open in the next year. That's always a good reason to come and to come back. The Grand Salon opens on a big terrace, which was the former fortress and transformed it into a garden from the 18th century. We recreate new gardens at the end of the 20th century. The new gardens are mainly a rose garden, a maze, and big green walls made by yew. Protected by the yew, you can see the small rose garden. We were inspired by different English rose gardens, and we mixed the roses with hardy plants, and we have here mostly a collection of Chinese roses, with Chinese teas and hybrid tea roses. They are very happy in our climate and our soil. I love these roses because they start to flower very early in spring, and they last until November or December, as long as it doesn't freeze. This garden was designed by my brother Augustin Durs in 1997, and it gives a beautiful landscape that opens at the foot of the old château. It's like a surprise, you know. This is the lower garden, and on the other side of the river, the river is the Loire, and on the other side you can see the beautiful landscape. This is a sort of English landscape, like we say, but it's made on the French way. That means that it doesn't belong to the promenade, the walk. You cannot walk in it, because it's really dedicated to the cattle, but it belongs to the garden. It belongs to the view of the garden. This is really typically French, and it's still there. It was built in 1830. We transformed the lower garden, which was originally, in the 19th century, covered by annual flower beds, and we transformed it into a topiary garden and pools. And at the end, you see there is a small pavilion with the spring garden, and the walk goes on in the woods, where there is still botanical work. And it ends with a big potager, vegetable garden, that we still use today, where we collect vegetables and the fruit. We need a lot of food, because we make the jam in the old kitchen. Still, we made it with the old ovens, and so it's a very old tradition of jam making. And we organize it, we do it one weekend per month, during the season, from June to October. If you arrive at the right time, you can see us making the jam in the old kitchen. I explained to you, in a few words, a very, very long story, but I think the best thing is to come and visit us, and we will be very pleased to welcome you at the Château du Lude. Thank you.