#castle visits

LIVE

Last weekend I got to visit Alexandre Dumas’ castle and oh boy did he know how to spend his money. This castle has Everything. The whole place just shone with Great Decisions (naturally he had to sell it off after 4 years because money troubles). I genuinely loved it. Look at it:

a picture of a small sandstone castle with extremely elaborate stonecarving everywhere. the roof has fringe.

He named it after his novel, there’s a grotto, you get there going through a rock tunnel (all with convenient seats carved in of course) he put his faves on the outside and it all just has so much personality!

I’ll put some of my favourite features under the cut:

First of all, I’m gonna make a sepsrate post for Dumas’ writing castle, because yes he built a whole seperate castle to write in and it’s even more amazing. (The architect for both was Hippolyte Durand).

So, favourite features:

a stain glass window depicting a torch, flowers and arrows

a stain glass window depicting landsknechten in bright colours

an outside view of a window euh the posts carved with flowers. above it is the face of a figure with a laurel crown, the name has faded to illegibility

The stonecarvings were so pretty! And so personal! Over everyone window is the bust of a great writer, I spotted Shakespeare, Euripides, Ovid. I can only imagine these were Dumas’ literary faves. The windows had stain glass symbolism too, but sadly no explanation what they meant (lots of playing cards and knights though, very fun and dramatic) @pilferingapples do you happen to know why the inscription on the knight window is German? Did Dumas speak german?

The Moorish room! Orientalism was going strong around 1840, and apparently Dumas went to Tunisia and brought back a father son artisan duo to make him this room:

a photo of an intricately carved and decorated room in classic moorish style, inspired by the Al-hambra

(I really want to know what this cost) it seemed like a great lounging room (especially if you might be just a tad hungover).

Dumas had to sell his furniture, so none of that remained, but the museum did get back his chair:

a photo of a very used antique chair next to a picture of an older Dumas in that very chair

Very cool, especially since we have a photp of Dumas in that chair (this was apparently where he did his last edits for his serial, it looked very comfy and heavily used)

The dining room was so beautiful and clearly the centre of the house. Dumas apparently cooked for his friends (sadly the kitchen is no more) and the parties must have been so amazing.